Henry Everett McNeil (25 September 1862 – 14 December 1929) was a leading children's author of the 1910s and 1920s, and was an original and core member of the Kalem Club circle around the writer H.P.
He had a short career in the early cinema in New York from 1912 to 1917, as a scriptwriter, including as writer on major features such as The Martyrdom of Philip Strong (1916) and The Making Over of Geoffrey Manning (1915).
Despite the relative success of his regularly published books, which he wrote at the steady rate of 200 words a day, he appears to have led a life of genteel and ever-declining poverty.
He died in 1929 shortly after ill health caused him to move in with his sister in Tacoma, Washington,[2] and when his books were starting to bring in more money than before.
Lovecraft's "The Pigeon-Flyers", part of his late weird sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth, was inspired by McNeil's death.