Herman Charles Merivale (1839 u1906) was an English dramatist and poet. He often used the pseudonym Felix Dale. He was a barrister, writer, and civil servant who was Permanent Under-Secretary of the India Office. Following his father's death in 1874 he gave up the law in favor of literature and the theatre. Merivale wrote many farces and burlesques. After suffering from depression his doctor sent him to Australia where he recovered. He returned to find that his fortune was gone. Just before his death he became a Roman catholic. His works include A Husband in Clover (1873) farce, All For Her...

My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum is one of many similar tales (e.g. Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop's A Secret Institution, 1890) which echoed and fed the fear rife in Victorian Britain of being falsely confined in such private asylums. Merivale's pamphlet perhaps stands out from others, however, in its literary stature, coming from the pen of an author who counted amongst his friends William Makepeace Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens and others.
The barrister and author Herman Charles Merivale (1839-1906) was committed, in February 1875, to...