Evelyn Scott (born Elsie Dunn, January 17, 1893 – August 3, 1963) was an American novelist, playwright and poet. A modernist and experimental writer, she "was a significant literary figure in the 1920s and 1930s, but she eventually sank into critical oblivion".

Personal life

Dunn was born in

Clarksville, Tennessee Clarksville is a city in Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. The city had a population of 166,722 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Tennessee, fifth-most populo ...

, and spent her younger years in

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

. She wrote about her childhood in her autobiographical ''Background in Tennessee''. Dunn's first husband was Frederick Creighton Wellman. He was a married man when they met and dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Tulane. Both took on pseudonyms when they ran away to Brazil together in 1913. He became Cyril Kay-Scott and she took Scott as her surname. The two had a son, Creighton, before divorcing in 1928. She also had an

affair An affair is a relationship typically between two people, one or both of whom are either married or in a long-term Monogamy, monogamous or emotionally-exclusive relationship with someone else. The affair can be solely sexual, solely physical or ...

with Owen Merton, father of

Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915December 10, 1968), religious name M. Louis, was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, Christian mysticism, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. He was a monk in the Trapp ...

. Scott married the English writer John Metcalfe in 1930."Metcalfe, John" by

Brian Stableford Brian Michael Stableford (25 July 1948 – 24 February 2024) was a British academic, critic and science fiction writer who published a hundred novels and over a hundred volumes of translations. His earlier books were published under the name Br ...

David Pringle David Pringle (born 1 March 1950) is a Scottish science fiction editor and critic. Pringle served as the editor of '' Foundation'', an academic journal, from 1980 to 1986, during which time he became one of the prime movers of the collective whi ...

, ''St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost and Gothic Writers''. London : St. James Press, 1998, (pp. 405-6).

Literary career

Scott sometimes wrote under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

Ernest Souza or 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

Children's

*''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

References

External links

* *
Evelyn Scott Collection
at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center, known as the Humanities Research Center until 1983, is an archive, library, and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, Evelyn 20th-century American novelists American women novelists Pseudonymous women writers 1893 births 1963 deaths Place of birth missing Place of death missing American women dramatists and playwrights 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights 20th-century pseudonymous writers