Evelyn Scott (writer)
Evelyn Scott | |
---|---|
Born | Elise Dunn January 17, 1893 |
Died | August 3, 1963 | (aged 70)
Spouse | Frederick Creighton Wellman |
Evelyn Scott (born as Elsie Dunn January 17, 1893 – died August 3, 1963) was an American novelist, playwright and poet. A modernist and experimental writer, Scott "was a significant literary figure in the 1920s and 1930s, but she eventually sank into critical oblivion."[1]
Personal life
She was born in Clarksville, Tennessee and spent her younger years in New Orleans, Louisiana.[2] She later wrote about her childhood in Tennessee in her autobiographical Background in Tennessee.[3]
Her first husband was Frederick Creighton Wellman. He was a married man when they met and dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Tulane.[2] Both Evelyn and her husband took on pseudonyms when they ran away to Brazil together in 1913.[2] Frederick changed his name to Cyril Kay-Scott and Evelyn also took Scott as her surname. The two had a son together, Creighton, but were divorced in 1928.[4][2] She also had an affair with Owen Merton, father of Thomas Merton.[3]
Scott later married the English writer John Metcalfe in 1930.[5][4]
Literary career
She sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Ernest Souza, and under her birth name, Elsie Dunn.
Bibliography
Fiction
- The Narrow House. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1921
- Narcissus. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922 (U.K. edition: Bewilderment. London: Duckworth, 1922)
- The Golden Door. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1925
- Ideals: a Book of Farce and Comedy. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927
- Migrations: an Arabesque in Histories. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927
- The Wave. New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1929
- Blue Rum (written under the pseudonym "Ernest Souza"). New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1930
- A Calendar of Sin: American Melodramas. New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1931
- Eva Gay. New York: Harrison Smith & Robert Haas, 1933
- Breathe Upon These Slain. New York: Scribners, 1934
- Bread and a Sword. New York: Scribners, 1937
- The Shadow of the Hawk. New York: Scribners, 1941
Poetry
- Precipitations. New York: Nicholas L. Brown, 1920
- The Winter Alone. New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1930
- The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott (ed. Caroline C. Maun). Orono: National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine, 2005
Autobiography
- Escapade. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923
- Background in Tennessee. New York: R. M. McBride, 1937
For children
- In the Endless Sands: a Christmas Book for Boys and Girls (with C. Kay-Scott). New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1925
- Witch Perkins: a Story of the Kentucky Hills. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1929
- Billy the Maverick. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1934
Further reading
- Callard, D. A. Pretty Good for a Woman: The Enigmas of Evelyn Scott. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985
- White, Mary Wheeling. Fighting the Current: The Life and Work of Evelyn Scott. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998
- Scura, Dorothy McInnis and Jones, Paul C., eds. Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001
- Tyrer, Pat. Evelyn Scott's Contribution to American Literary Modernism, 1920-1940: A Study of Her Trilogy: The New Woman in the Narrow House, Narcissus, and The Golden Door. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013
References
- ^ Scura, Dorothy M.; Jones, Paul C., eds. (2001). Evelyn Scott: Recovering a Lost Modernist. Univ. of Tennessee Press. p. xiii. ISBN 9781572331167.
- ^ a b c d Petersen, Robert C. "Evelyn Scott". Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.
- ^ a b Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. "Evelyn Scott". Texas Archival Resources Online.
- ^ a b "Finding Aid for the Evelyn Scott Letters (MS-2300)". Special Collections Online at the University of Tennessee. Retrieved March 16, 2021.
- ^ "Metcalfe, John" by Brian Stableford in David Pringle, St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers. London : St. James Press, 1998, ISBN 1558622063 (pp. 405-6).
External links
- Evelyn Scott Collection at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
- Evelyn Scott Collection at the Harry Ransom Center