{{Short description|British novelist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}} {{Use British English|date=December 2024}} {{Infobox writer <!-- For more information see :Template:Infobox Writer/doc. --> | name = Leo Hamilton Myers | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = Leopold Hamilton Myers | birth_date = 6 September 1881 | birth_place = Cambridge, England | death_date = {{Death date and age|1944|04|07|1881|09|06|df=y}} | death_place = Marlow-on-Thames, England | resting_place = | occupation = | language = | nationality = British | ethnicity = | citizenship = | education = Eton College | alma_mater = Trinity College, Cambridge | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = ''The Root and the Flower'' | spouse = Elsie Mellen Palmer | partner = | children = E.Q. Nicholson | relatives = | influences = | influenced = | awards = James Tait Black Memorial Prize | signature = }}
'''Leopold Hamilton Myers''' (6 September 1881 – 7 April 1944) was a British novelist.
==Life== thumb|left|with his mother Myers was born in Leckhampton House, Cambridge into a cultured family; his father was the writer Frederic William Henry Myers (1843-1901) and his mother the photographer Eveleen Tennant (1856-1937).<ref name=hamilton54>{{cite book | title=Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian search for life after death | first=Trevor | last=Hamilton | publisher=Imprint Academic | year=2009 | isbn=978-1-8454-0248-8 | page=54}}</ref><ref name=odnb>Cresswell (2004)</ref> He was named after his godfather, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany.<ref name=hamilton54/> He was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge.<ref>{{acad|id=MRS860FW|name=Myers, Leo}}</ref> His trilogy/tetralogy ''The Root and the Flower'', set in India at the time of Akbar, is his major work and was recognised by the award of the 1935 James Tait Black Memorial Prize 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,<ref name=odnb/> and a friend of John Singer Sargent, who painted her. He made many friends of different kinds, and late in life broke with most of them.<ref>Adrian Wright, ''The Past is a Foreign Country: The Life of L. P. Hartley'' (1996), p, 131.</ref> In the 1930s he wrote in sympathy with Marxist thought, and became increasingly pessimistic in his outlook.{{Clarify|date=March 2010}} He committed suicide on 7 April 1944 by taking an overdose of Veronal.<ref name=odnb/><ref name=origo>Caroline Moorehead. [http://books.googlecom/books?id=6e6EAAAAIAAJ ''Iris Origo: marchesa of Val d'Orcia'']{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, Boston: David R. Godine, 2002 (1st ed. London: John Murray, 2000). {{ISBN|9781567921830}}. p. 256.</ref><ref name=hamilton9>{{cite book | title=Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian search for life after death | first=Trevor | last=Hamilton | publisher=Imprint Academic | year=2009 | isbn=978-1-8454-0248-8 | page=9}}</ref>
He was on the edge of the Bloomsbury group and knew L. P. Hartley,<ref>Adrian Wright, ''The Past is a Foreign Country: The Life of L. P. Hartley'' (1996), p, 91.</ref> Aelfrida Tillyard and Max Plowman. He kept up a lengthy correspondence with Olaf Stapledon.<ref>Robert Crossley, ''Olaf Stapledon; Speaking for the Future'' (1994), p. 194.</ref> Other friends were David Lindsay,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.violetapple.org.uk/notes/lh_myers.php |title = the Violet Apple.org.uk — L H Myers}}</ref> Frank Dobson,<ref>Malcolm Easton, ''Frank Dobson's 'Cornucopia' (Hull University Art Collection)'', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 111, No. 795 (Jun., 1969), pp. 382-386.</ref> and Charles le Gai Eaton.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/june02_index.php?l=21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021123001235/http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/june02_index.php?l=21 |archive-date=23 November 2002 |title=Conversion: Islam, the growing religion}}</ref> By an anonymous loan he helped George Orwell travel to Morocco in 1938, to convalesce from tuberculosis.<ref>Jeffrey Meyers, ''George Orwell: The Critical Heritage'' (1997), p. 16.</ref>
The designer EQ Nicholson was his daughter.
==Works== [[File:Miss Elsie Palmer.jpg|thumb|Elsie Palmer, painted by John Singer Sargent]] * ''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==
* {{cite book | first=Geoffrey Herman | last=Bantock | year=1956 | title=L. H. Myers: a critical study | url=https://archive.org/details/lhmyerscriticals0000bant | url-access=registration }} * {{ODNBweb | id=35178 | title=Myers, Leopold Hamilton (1881–1944) | first=Sophia | last=Creswell | year=2004 | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/35178 }} * {{cite book | first=D.J. | last=Taylor | year=2004 | title=Orwell: The Life | url=https://archive.org/details/orwell00djta | url-access=registration }}
==Notes== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Leopold Hamilton Myers}} * [http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/myers-l-h Enotes page]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Myers, Lh}} Category:People educated at Eton College Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:1881 births Category:1944 deaths Category:James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients Category:British male poets Category:English male novelists Category:20th-century English poets Category:20th-century English novelists Category:20th-century English male writers Category:1944 suicides Category:Drug-related suicides in England Category:Barbiturates-related deaths