Leonard Merrick

[4] After surviving a near-fatal case of "camp fever,"[5][6] he returned to London in the late 1880s and worked as an actor and actor-manager[4] under the stage name of Leonard Merrick.

[7][8] Merrick's novels include Mr Bazalgette's Agent (1888), a detective story; Violet Moses (1891), about a Jewish financier and his troubled wife; The Worldlings (1900), a psychological investigation of a crime; Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1903), the tale of a disillusioned man who, at thirty-seven, sets out to pick up the romantic threads of his younger life, which is "judged his most successful work" according to John Sutherland;[3] George Orwell thought that this is because it is one of the few of his books which is not set against a background of poverty.

[13] At least eleven of Merrick's stories have been adapted to screen, most in the 1920s, including Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920) directed by William C. deMille.

Later adaptions include a 1931 film The Magnificent Lie based on the story "Laurels and the Lady", and a 1952 TV episode called "Masquerade" for Lux Video Theatre based on the story "The Doll in the Pink Silk Dress".

Merrick died on 7 August 1939 at the age of 75, twelve days before the start of World War II; he was at a London nursing home.