Meredith M. Nicholson

Biography

Meredith M. Nicholson arrived in the world on 28 June 1894 in Crawfordsville, Indiana, christened John Ramsay Allardyce Nicholson—a mouthful he would later trim to something easier for book spines. While still in his teens he was already trading words for cash: sixteen-year-old “Meredith” saw verses surface in small weeklies, and a brisk five-dollar payday from the Chicago Tribune confirmed that prose could pay the rent. Between turns as a court stenographer and a stint tallying ore for a Colorado mining outfit, he carved out time to chronicle his home state, producing the historical portrait The Hoosiers in 1900. Five years later he struck storytelling gold with The House of a Thousand Candles, a thriller so irresistible that Hollywood raided it more than once. Though dozens of other titles followed, none ever matched the glow of that single, candle-lit mansion.