Author: Meredith Nicholson (1866 – 1947)

Nicholson didn’t really like the life of business and law in which he was expected to work. He wanted to write and publish a book of poems. One day, as he was admiring the copies of his book in a bookstore, James Whitcomb Riley entered, and they talked for a while. The next day, Nicholson was excited to see all his books had been sold. Only later would he learn that Riley had bought them all!

As a novelist, Nicholson found widespread success. He had eight bestsellers between 1903 and 1925, and published many essays and analyses of current events in newspapers and magazines. He is best known for his popular light romances, with his most famous novel, The House of a Thousand Candles (1905), a thrilling mystery romance set in northern Indiana.

Nicholson became politically active in Progressive Era issues, and by 1911, he and his wife Eugenie advocated for women’s suffrage and equality. In the 1920s, he denounced Ku Klux Klan influence in Indiana politics. By the late 1920s, Nicholson’s writing lost popularity, and with the onset of the Great Depression and his wife Eugenie’s death, he gave up writing.

A lifelong Democrat, he undertook a new career in 1933 as a diplomat. From 1933 to 1941, Nicholson held several diplomatic posts in Latin America before spending his last years living in Indianapolis and writing a weekly newspaper column. He also served on Crown Hill’s Board of Corporators for many years.