Harris Merton Lyon was born on December 22, 1883, at Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. His mother was Mary (Merton) Lyon, successively a cook in a railroad hotel, a "bawler out" for a loan shark, a private detective, and an insurance agent; his father, apparently, he never knew.
Mary Lyon managed to put Harris Merton through a Texas high school and to send him to the University of Missouri, where, supporting himself by casual employment and some newspaper writing, he graduated in 1905. His college years appear to have been happy. Having a good linguistic sense, he worked hard at Latin and fairly reveled in modern French literature, especially in the work of the symbolists and naturalists.
For a short time Lyon was theatrical reporter on the Houston, Texas, Post. As was inevitable with a young man seething with literary ambition, he quickly made his way to New York, where, in the spring of 1906, he was doing minor assignments for the Broadway Magazine when Theodore Dreiser became its editor. Under Lyon's rough, surly exterior Dreiser discerned an honest, sensitive mind and an unusual talent for writing; and as soon as he could he put Lyon on the staff of the magazine. He remained with the Broadway through two reorganizations and modifications of its name, and, when it became Hampton's Magazine in 1909, was made dramatic critic and a director of the concern. The owner sent him to Europe to interview Dr. Frederick A. Cook at Copenhagen and to visit Paris and gave him other opportunities.
For a few years, during which he bought a farm in Winsted, Connecticut, he lived in a hectic, uncertain prosperity, was somewhat bemused by the rush and glitter of metropolitan life, lived beyond his income, and overestimated his security and influence. With the suspension of Hampton's Magazine in 1912 this prosperity came to an abrupt end, and the remaining four years of his life were marked by poverty, the bitterness of frustrated ambition, and the rapid progress of a fatal disease of the kidneys. Though he continued to write with furious energy, the market for his stories had vanished.
To Reedy's Mirror in 1914-1915 he contributed, probably without pay, an excellent series of essays under the general title, "From an Old Farmhouse, " and he also did some work for a motion-picture company on the Pacific coast. His place in American literature depends on two volumes of short stories, Sardonics (1908) and Graphics (1913). The first was dedicated, significantly enough, to the memory of "the Norman master, " and the second to Joseph Conrad. They were issued by obscure publishing houses and received little notice, but they contain some of the best short stories ever written by an American. In sharpness of observation, in deft, sympathetic characterization, and in the concentration and poetic quality of his language Lyon displayed literary power of a high order. At the time of his death he was practically forgotten, and he has been neglected since; but among his fellow writers he has always been admired.
(Excerpt from Graphics IT seems to me that in the candy t...)
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