Meredith Nicholson

Nicholson was born on December 9, 1866, in Crawfordsville, Indiana, to Edward Willis Nicholson and the former Emily Meredith. Largely self-taught, Nicholson began a newspaper career in 1884 at the Indianapolis Sentinel. He moved to the Indianapolis News the following year, where he remained until 1897.

He wrote Short Flights in 1891, and continued to publish extensively, both poetry and prose until 1928. During the first quarter of the 20th century, Nicholson, along with Booth Tarkington, George Ade, and James Whitcomb Riley helped to create a Golden Age of literature in Indiana. Three of his books from that era were national bestsellers:

• The House of a Thousand Candles (#4 in 1906)
• The Port of Missing Men (#3 in 1907)
• A Hoosier Chronicle (#5 in 1912)

In 1928, Nicholson entered Democratic party politics, and served for two years as a city councilman in Indianapolis. He rose through the ranks of the Democratic party and was rewarded with appointments as Envoy to Paraguay, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Nicholson was married firstly to Eugenie Clementine Kountze, daughter of Herman Kountze, and secondly to Dorothy Wolfe Lannon, whom he later divorced.

Nicholson died on December 21, 1947, in Indianapolis, aged 81, and is buried in the Crown Hill Cemetery.

• Nicholson, Meredith (1891). Short Flights. Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill. OCLC 4127041.
• Nicholson, Meredith (1903). The Little Brown Jug at Kildare. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. OCLC 562275913.
• Nicholson, Meredith (1905). The House of a Thousand Candles. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. OCLC 169496.
• Nicholson, Meredith (1907). The Port of Missing Men. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. OCLC 999440. Reissued as Daily Mail sixpenny novel No. 166 in 1912. With illustrations by G. H. Evison.
• Nicholson, Meredith (1912). A Hoosier Chronicle. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. OCLC 36827854.
• Nicholson, Meredith (1922). Best Laid Schemes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. OCLC 10689314.

• The Port of Missing Men, directed by Francis Powers (1914, based on the novel The Port of Missing Men)
• The House of a Thousand Candles, directed by Thomas N. Heffron (1915, based on the novel The House of a Thousand Candles)
• Langdon's Legacy, directed by Otis Turner (1916)
• The Lords of High Decision, directed by Jack Harvey (1916, based on the novel The Lords of High Decision)
• The Hopper, directed by Thomas N. Heffron (1918, based on the short story The Hopper)
• Haunting Shadows, directed by Henry King (1919, based on the novel The House of a Thousand Candles)
• Broken Barriers, directed by Reginald Barker (1924, based on the novel Broken Barriers)
• The House of a Thousand Candles, directed by Arthur Lubin (1935, based on the novel The House of a Thousand Candles)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Meredith Nicholson.

Wikisource has the text of a 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica article about "Meredith Nicholson".

• Works by Meredith Nicholson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Meredith Nicholson at Internet Archive
• Works by Meredith Nicholson at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Meredith Nicholson at Unz.org
• Meredith Nicholson at IMDb
• Meredith Nicholson at Find a Grave