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."

Evelyn Scott
Born	Elise Dunn (1893-01-17)January 17, 1893
Died	August 3, 1963(1963-08-03) (aged 70)
Spouse	Frederick Creighton Wellman

Personal life

She was born in Clarksville, Tennessee and spent her younger years in New Orleans, Louisiana. She later wrote about her childhood in Tennessee in her autobiographical Background in Tennessee.

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. Both Evelyn and her husband took on pseudonyms when they ran away to Brazil together in 1913. 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. She also had an affair with Owen Merton, father of Thomas Merton.

Scott later married the English writer John Metcalfe in 1930.

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

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 Center