Evelyn Scott (writer)

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[]

External links[]

• Works by Evelyn Scott at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Evelyn Scott at Internet Archive

• Evelyn Scott Collection at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
• Evelyn Scott Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center