Harry Leon Wilson
Harry Leon Wilson (1867-1939) was an American writer known for his contributions to novels and plays that often featured humorous takes on Western life and individualism. Born in Oregon, Illinois, he began his career in the publishing industry as a printer's devil for his father's newspaper and later worked as a stenographer for the Union Pacific Railroad. Wilson's literary journey gained momentum when he became editor of the humor magazine Puck in 1898, and he quickly transitioned to writing novels, with his first major work, *The Spenders* (1902), solidifying his reputation.
He collaborated with playwright Booth Tarkington, producing several plays and garnering comparisons to Mark Twain for his humor. Notable works from his productive years include *Bunker Bean* (1913), *Merton of the Movies* (1922), and *Ruggles of Red Gap* (1915), which explored themes of class and character growth against a Western backdrop. Wilson's personal life included three marriages and struggles with alcoholism, particularly after his second divorce. His popularity waned during the Great Depression, although *Ruggles of Red Gap* was adapted into a film in 1935. Wilson suffered memory impairment after a car accident in the 1930s and passed away from a brain hemorrhage in 1939.
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Harry Leon Wilson
Writer
- Born: May 1, 1867
- Birthplace: Oregon, Illinois
- Died: June 29, 1939
- Place of death: Carmel, California
Biography
Harry Leon Wilson was born in 1867 in Oregon, Illinois, the son of a newspaper publisher. Wilson ’s first job was working as a printer’s devil for his father’s newspaper; by the time he was seventeen, he was employed as a stenographer for the Union Pacific Railroad and then as a secretary to a publisher. Wilson began to write pieces for the humor magazine Puck and by 1898 he had become the magazine’s editor, a position he held for six years. When he resigned, he had already begun his career as a novelist and playwright, working with dramatist Booth Tarkington.
His first novel, The Spenders (1902), established his writing career and with his following work, including the six plays he wrote in collaboration with Tarkington, he found himself praised as an American humorist who was sometimes compared to Mark Twain and was financially well rewarded for his efforts. Wilson was a prolific writer who often relied on formulas to produce the fiction that was so well received. His most popular work featured Western settings, a figure who represented the individualist character of the West, and a naïve and bumbling hero who is educated in the ways of the world by a lively, practical, but essentially controlling young woman. Much of Wilson’s apprenticeship writing was done while he was married to his first wife, Wilbertine Teters (they were divorced in 1900) and his second, Rose O’Neill, the originator of the Kewpie doll, whom he divorced in 1907. After that divorce, Wilson spent several unproductive years, dogged by the failure of his marriage and by his heavy drinking. In 1912, he married Helen MacGowan Cooke and the couple later had two children.
The period between 1912 and 1924 was the high point of Wilson’s productivity. In these years, he wrote the novels for which he is most likely to be remembered, particularly Bunker Bean (1913), Merton of the Movies (1922), and Ruggles of Red Gap (1915). In the latter work, an English butler, Ruggles, finds himself working for an American ranch family, who hope to add some class to a hayseed cousin and elevate the tone of their town, Red Gap. Washington. In the course of the novel, the snobbish Ruggles is taught the value of a good heart and the ranchers learn the uselessness of false values. Also during this period, Wilson created the Ma Pettengill stories in the Western tall tale tradition, publishing many of them in the Saturday Evening Post. Wilson and Cooke were divorced in 1927. The popularity of Wilson’s work ebbed during the Depression, although Ruggles of Red Gap was made into a film starring Charles Laughton in 1935. In the mid- 1930’s, Wilson was in an automobile accident that left his memory impaired. He died of a brain hemorrhage in 1939.