John R. Coryell

John Russell Coryell (December 15, 1851, in New York City – July 15, 1924, in Readfield, Maine) was an American dime novel author. He wrote under the Nicholas Carter and Bertha M. Clay house pseudonyms, and, like many of his fellow dime novelists under many other pseudonyms, including Tyman Currio, Lillian R. Drayton, Julia Edwards, Geraldine Fleming, Margaret Grant, Barbara Howard, Harry Dubois Milman, Milton Quarterly, and Lucy May Russell.

Biography Background and early life According to Coryell's son Russell, "The Coryell family was descended from French Huguenots driven out of France. They settled early in America. One ancestor, a Coryell, was a pall-bearer to Washington." However, recent DNA testing has revealed that the Coryells are descended from the Sephardic Jewish Curiel family, and specifically from Jacob Curiel (1587-1664).

John R. Coryell was educated in NYC public schools and city college. In 1869, he abandoned the study of law (presumably at Harvard) to join his father, who was building battleships for the Chinese government. The result was a novel, The American Marquis, or, Detective for Vengeance: A Story of a Masked Bride and a Husband's Quest, bylined “Nicholas Carter.” Coryell estimated that he wrote over two hundred novels.

Another momentous collaboration occurred in 1919. Macfadden and Coryell developed the model of the first-person confessional story and created True Story to bring it to the public. The magazine was extremely successful and added a significant new theme to magazine publishing. As the magazine progressed, Coryell “helped spot the real stories, the good stories, and weed out the phonies and the frauds.” With the advent of True Story, Coryell became a permanent member of the Macfadden editorial staff. Expanding upon his earlier remarks, Oursler wrote: “In the course of his life [Coryell] had been a Socialist, embraced the Anarchist philosophy, and finally came through all the isms to believe in tolerance as the greatest and most difficult goal of the race.”

Coryell frequently lectured on his beliefs, for instance his advocacy of free marriage and free divorce.

He was a close friend of anarchist Emma Goldman. He was an early and frequent contributor to Goldman's journal, Mother Earth (using the penname Margaret Grant). On January 6, 1907, Coryell presided at an anarchists’ organizational meeting attended by Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and intended as a fundraiser for Mother Earth. Goldman's speech on "Misconceptions of Anarchism" led police to break up the meeting with Berkman urging the crowd to disobey. Goldman was arrested for "uttering incendiary remarks from a public platform"; Coryell and Berkman were held as accessories. All were released for lack of evidence. In 1911, Coryell and his wife Abby were the inaugural teachers at the Modern School, founded by Goldman and Berkman. Coryell described the school as "radical in the method of teaching, but not radical in the things taught."

Death and legacy Coryell died at his summer home in Readfield, Maine while still in the employ of Macfadden Publications. According to Macfadden editor Lyon Mearson, “He died while reading a manuscript.”

Of his literary dimensions, Harold Hersey, who had serialized Coryell's Strasbourg Rose in Street & Smith's The Thrill Book, wrote: “I recall him as a man with a kindly soul, a patient, balanced mind, and with an imagination that had created thousands of characters, thousands of situations and thousands of plots.” Oursler noted that “Nothing offended him so much as an attempt at ‘fine writing.’ Simplicity was his literary god, and he had the ability to write stories that anyone, learned or illiterate, could pick up and enjoy.” Editor and publisher F. Orlin Tremaine, who began at Macfadden during Coryell's final years, wrote that “he taught me more about stories, simplicity of approach, and the technique of modern writing than any other person, before or since.”

Coryell has something of an inverted legacy. He was a creator or co-creator of two highly influential publishing initiatives. He became famous for creating Nick Carter, for which he had only limited involvement. Conversely, he is virtually unrecognized for his significant role in developing the first-person confessional which became a powerful force in magazine publishing.

Selected bibliography

Novels Feuilleton/serial novels Le Marquis français ou détective par vengeance, New York Weekly (1884)

Novels

Nick Carter series The Old Detective's Pupil (1887) A Wall Street Haul (1887) Fighting Against Millions (1888) The Crime of a Contess (1888) A Titled Counterfeiter (1888) A Woman's Head (1888)

Non-Nick Carter novels Diego Pinzon (1892) Diccon the Bold (1893) The Hound of Marat (1915) The Blue Rose (1916) Strasbourg Rose serialized in four parts, 1919

Novellas How Sin Hop Went Ashore (1882) The Largest Pet in the World (1883) The Midget Sheep (1883) Snow-Shoes and No Shoes (1883) A Submarine Fire-Eater (1883) Pigmy Trees and Miniature Landscapes (1884), in collaboration with James Carter Beard The Spider and the Tuning Fork (1884) Swordsmen of the Deep (1884) The Romance of the Menagerie (1884), in collaboration with James Carter Beard Baby Deb "P'ays" for the Christmas Goose (1885) Cased in Armor (1885) Honey Hunters (1885) The Rajah's Paper Cutter (1885) The King of the Frozen North (1886) Savage and Cowardly (1886) St. Nicholas Dog Stories - A Clever Little Yellow Dog (1886) Wild Hunters (1886) A Scheming Old Santa Claus (1886) The Strange Doings of the Kiwi (1887) Elephants at Work (1887) Lassoing a Sea-Lion (1889) Sweet Memories (1889) Jokers of the Menagerie (1889) Wolves of the Sea (1890) A Rat's Cheveux de Frise (1890) Sallie Drew's Vocation (1914) A Modern Gulliver's Travels (1915) Talking Talbot (1915) The Bundle of Bonds (1916) The Gilded Eros (1917) Dorothy Meade's Problem (1917) The Blotted Combinaison (1918) Stenographer of Wife? (1922) The Dragon's Eye (1922) The Girl is in the Main Thing (1923) What Chance Has a Mere Husband Against a Poodle? (1923) The Girl Who Found Her Own Soul (1923) A Factory Girl's Romance (1924)

Physical Culture articles and fiction "Fruit Drinks for Summer Use," August 1905 [as H. Mitchell Watchet] "The Arrest and Trial of the Editor," June 1906 [as H. Mitchell Watchet] Wild Oats, or Growing to Manhood in a Civilized (?) Society, October 1906 to March 1907 "Physical Culture Crusade Against White Flour," March 1909 [as H. Mitchell Watchet] "Can We Suppress Sex?" August 1914 "Love and Marriage 100 Years from Now," March 1922 to September 1922 " 'Knock-Out' Riley," January 1924

Scientific American articles

Other nonfiction "Marriage and the Home," Mother Earth, April 1906