George E. (George Earle) Merkley

George E. Merkley, usually listed as George Earle Merkley, was born in 1865. Surviving catalog records connect him with Canadian Melodies and Poems (Toronto, 1893), a volume of verse, and later with A Modern Rhetoric (New York, 1902), a book on writing and language.

Those two books suggest an author whose interests ranged from poetry to teaching composition. Canadian Melodies and Poems points to a Canadian literary identity, while A Modern Rhetoric shows him working in a more practical, instructional mode.

Basic biographical details remain uncertain in the sources I could confirm. Some library and ebook records give his death as 1901? while others suggest 1904?, so it seems safest to say that he was active in the 1890s and early 1900s.