John Russell Coryell (December 15, 1851,[1] in New York City – July 15, 1924, in Readfield, Maine) was an American dime novel author.

He wrote under the Nicholas Carter and Bertha M. Clay house pseudonyms, and, like many of his fellow dime novelists under many other pseudonyms, including Tyman Currio, Lillian R. Drayton, Julia Edwards, Geraldine Fleming, Margaret Grant, Barbara Howard, Harry Dubois Milman, Milton Quarterly, and Lucy May Russell.

His early works break into two main categories: popular science articles for Scientific American; and juvenile fiction for St. Nicholas.

[7] The result was a novel, The American Marquis, or, Detective for Vengeance: A Story of a Masked Bride and a Husband's Quest, bylined “Nicholas Carter.”[6] The proceeds covered the birth expenses for the Coryells’ first son, Harold.

The Old Detective's Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square, was serialized in thirteen consecutive issues of the New York Weekly, the first dated September 18, 1886.

The creation of the famous fictional detective was frequently attributed to other writers who had authored Nick Carter stories.

An early science fiction novel, The Weird and Wonderful Story of Another World, appeared under the byline Tyman Currio, and was serialized in twelve installments from October 1905 through September 1906.

Based on an idea from Bernarr Macfadden, Coryell wrote the novel Wild Oats, or Growing to Manhood in a Civilized (?)

Fulton Oursler, Macfadden's editor-in-chief who Coryell helped hire, described his benefactor as “a brave and radical thinker .

actively engaged in many political campaigns of a liberal character.”[13] Expanding upon his earlier remarks, Oursler wrote: “In the course of his life [Coryell] had been a Socialist, embraced the Anarchist philosophy, and finally came through all the isms to believe in tolerance as the greatest and most difficult goal of the race.”[14] Coryell frequently lectured on his beliefs, for instance his advocacy of free marriage and free divorce.

[16] On January 6, 1907, Coryell presided at an anarchists’ organizational meeting attended by Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and intended as a fundraiser for Mother Earth.

[17] Goldman's speech on "Misconceptions of Anarchism" led police to break up the meeting with Berkman urging the crowd to disobey.

Goldman was arrested for "uttering incendiary remarks from a public platform"; Coryell and Berkman were held as accessories.

According to Macfadden editor Lyon Mearson, “He died while reading a manuscript.”[3] Fulton Oursler wrote: “John was my close friend until the summer of 1924, when he typed the last sentence of the last installment of his last serial and quietly died in his chair.”[19] Of his literary dimensions, Harold Hersey, who had serialized Coryell's Strasbourg Rose in Street & Smith's The Thrill Book, wrote: “I recall him as a man with a kindly soul, a patient, balanced mind, and with an imagination that had created thousands of characters, thousands of situations and thousands of plots.”[20] Oursler noted that “Nothing offended him so much as an attempt at ‘fine writing.’ Simplicity was his literary god, and he had the ability to write stories that anyone, learned or illiterate, could pick up and enjoy.”[21] Editor and publisher F. Orlin Tremaine, who began at Macfadden during Coryell's final years, wrote that “he taught me more about stories, simplicity of approach, and the technique of modern writing than any other person, before or since.”[22] Coryell has something of an inverted legacy.

Conversely, he is virtually unrecognized for his significant role in developing the first-person confessional which became a powerful force in magazine publishing.