Leonard Merrick (1864 – 1939) was an English novelist. Although largely forgotten today, he was widely admired by his peers, J. M. Barrie called Merrick the "novelist's novelist." * * * * An excerpt from the Introduction by Arthur Pinero. ...The story of Peggy Harper, as the reader will soon find, is a simple affair. I don't propose to retell it here. As a matter of fact, any ordinarily equipped story-teller desiring to treat of the theatre could, without a great expenditure of mental effort, conceive the story of Peggy Harper. But, having conceived it, nobody, I am convinced, could unfold it in such a consummately natural, unforced way as Mr. Merrick unfolds it, nor people it as he peoples it. Christopher, the wretched Galbraith, poor Elsie Lane, Armytage the bogus-manager, Naomi Knight, Logan Ross, Mrs. Harper, Peggy herself, are a wonderful little group etched with unerring fidelity and power of suggestion. Galbraith I have met too often. He is to be found—was to be found, at any rate—in the higher class theatre as well as in the lower. One of my Galbraiths, a man of education and a good fellow, who once held a prominent position in the principal London theatres, is finishing his days in a provincial workhouse. Mr. Merrick foreshadows a similar fate for his Galbraith. Naomi, in male form, was a close friend of mine. Everybody in stage-land is familiar with the actor who, terribly in earnest, has settled ideas as to exactly how a part should be played, and who, whether his ideas are sound or unsound, is utterly unable to embody them; but it was left to Mr. Merrick to give us, in Naomi Knight, a picture of this pathetic mixture of enthusiasm and incapacity. Logan Ross is not the equal of the amazing Spencer Parlett in When Love Flies out o' the Window—the latter is one of Mr. Merrick's really big things— but Ross is a fine portrait nevertheless. I am not quite so sure about Theodosia Moore, but I have no doubt whatever as to the ineffably vulgar, hen-brained Peggy. She is another of Mr. Merrick's masterpieces. The scene of her final dismissal of Christopher, short as it is, and the incidents immediately leading up to it, are among the perfect bits of verisimilitude in fiction. The young lady's last speech—to quote it would spoil the thrill—is an ineradicable memory....