Merrill was the product of a conservative, wealthy, Protestant upbringing. In 1866, his father George received a diplomatic appointment to
Paris, where Merrill would learn French and live for the next 19 years.
Stéphane Mallarmé was one of Merrill's school instructors. His classmates included future symbolists
René Ghil and
Pierre Quillard. Merrill ran a weekly journal,
Le fou, before returning to the States in 1884 to attend law school. Also in 1887, Merrill published his first book of poems,
Les gammes, in Paris, receiving wide critical acclaim in Europe. As his literary career took off he participated in radical political causes, siding with the
anarchists in the famous
Haymarket riots. When
George Bernard Shaw attempted to circulate a petition in London calling for the release of
Oscar Wilde, imprisoned for
homosexuality, Merrill made a similar attempt to get notable artists and intellectuals in the United States to voice support for Wilde. Merrill's father disinherited him for his politics, but his mother continued to support him financially throughout his life. In 1890, Merrill published
Pastels in Prose, a collection of his translations of French prose poems. This was his only book to be published in America during his lifetime. The same year, he returned to Europe permanently. He married in 1891. For the years 1893–1908, his address was
53 Quai de Bourbon,
Île Saint-Louis, Paris. Several more books, including
Les fastes in 1891 and
Petits poèmes d’automne in 1895, were published before his death of heart disease in 1915. In 1927 a small traffic way in the
17th arrondissement of Paris took the name
Place Stuart-Merrill. ==Works==