Leopold Hamilton Myers (6 September 1881 – 7 April 1944) was a British novelist.

Life

left, with his mother Myers was born in Leckhampton House,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

into a cultured family; his father was the writer

Frederic William Henry Myers Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843 – 17 January 1901) was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" we ...

(1843-1901) and his mother the photographer Eveleen Tennant (1856-1937).Cresswell (2004) He was named after his godfather,

Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (Leopold George Duncan Albert; 7 April 185328 March 1884) was the eighth child and youngest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Leopold was later created Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence, and Baron Arklow. He ...

. He was educated at

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

. His trilogy/tetralogy ''The Root and the Flower'', set in India at the time of

Akbar Akbar (Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, – ), popularly known as Akbar the Great, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expa ...

, is his major work and was recognised by the award of the 1935

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Un ...

for fiction. He did not visit India, and his writings about it have been seen by some critics as reflecting his own intellectual milieu and its concerns. He was independently wealthy from his mid-20s, travelled and began to write. In 1908 he married the American Elsie Palmer (1873–1955), daughter of General William Palmer, and a friend of

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 15, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era, Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil ...

, who painted her. He made many friends of different kinds, and late in life broke with most of them. In the 1930s he wrote in sympathy with

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

thought, and became increasingly pessimistic in his outlook. He committed suicide on 7 April 1944 by taking an overdose of

Veronal Barbital (or barbitone), sold under the brand names Veronal for the pure acid and Medinal for the sodium salt, was the first commercially available barbiturate. It was used as a sleeping aid (hypnotic) from 1903 until the mid-1950s. The chemical ...

.Caroline Moorehead
''Iris Origo: marchesa of Val d'Orcia''
Boston: David R. Godine, 2002 (1st ed. London: John Murray, 2000). . p. 256. He was on the edge of the

Bloomsbury group The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, a ...

and knew L. P. Hartley, Aelfrida Tillyard and Max Plowman. He kept up a lengthy correspondence with

Olaf Stapledon William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was an English philosopher and author of science fiction.Andy Sawyer, " illiamOlaf Stapledon (1886-1950)", in Bould, Mark, et al, eds. ''Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction''. New York ...

. Other friends were David Lindsay,

Frank Dobson Frank Gordon Dobson (15 March 1940 – 11 November 2019) was a British Labour Party politician. As Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn and St. Pancras from 1979 to 2015, he served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Health from 1997 ...

, and Charles le Gai Eaton. By an anonymous loan he helped

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

travel to Morocco in 1938, to convalesce from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

.Jeffrey Meyers, ''George Orwell: The Critical Heritage'' (1997), p. 16. The designer EQ Nicholson was his daughter.

Works

* ''Arvat'' (1908) verse drama * ''The Orissers'' (1922) * ''Clio'' (1925) * ''The Root and the Flower'' ** ''The Near and the Far'' (1929) ** ''Prince Jali'' (1931) ** ''Rajah Amar'' (1935), published as ''The Root and the Flower'' * ''Strange Glory'' (1936) * ''The Pool Of Vishnu'' (1940) now sometimes included as part 4 of ''The Root and the Flower''

References

* * *

Notes

External links

*
Enotes page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Myers, Lh People educated at Eton College Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge 1881 births 1944 deaths James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients British male poets English male novelists 20th-century English poets 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English male writers 1944 suicides Drug-related suicides in England Barbiturates-related deaths