Hugh Stowell Scott

Hugh Stowell Scott (9 May 1862 – 19 November 1903)[1][2] was an English novelist who wrote under the pseudonym of Henry Seton Merriman. His best known novel, The Sowers went through thirty UK editions.[3][4]

In Kedar's Tents (1897)

Life

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne,[5] he became an underwriter at Lloyd's of London, but then took to travel and writing novels, many of which had great popularity. Scott visited India as a tourist in 1877–1878 and set his novel Flotsam (1896) there.[6] He was an enthusiastic traveller, many of his journeys being made with his friend and fellow author Stanley J. Weyman.[7]

Scott married Ethel Frances Hall (1865–1943) on 19 June 1889.[8] They had no children. Scott was unusually modest and retiring in character. He died of appendicitis in 1903, aged 41, at Melton, Suffolk.[9][7] Scott left £5000 in his will to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, his sister-in-law and a fellow writer, best known for a biographical work, The Friends of Voltaire. Scott explained the legacy as a "token of my gratitude for her continued assistance and literary advice, without which I should never have been able to have made a living by my pen."[10]

He worked with great care, and his best books held a high place in Victorian fiction. His book The Sowers was made into a silent film in 1916.

Novels

His first novel, Young Mistley was published anonymously in 1888.[5] His other novels include The Phantom Future (his only novel set entirely in England, 1888), Suspense (1890), The Slave of the Lamp (1892), From One Generation to Another (1892), With Edged Tools (a bestseller in 1894), The Sowers (generally considered his best, set in Russia, where it was banned) (1896), In Kedar's Tents (1897),[11] Roden's Corner (1898), Dross (1899), Grey Lady; Isle of Unrest (1900), The Velvet Glove; The Vultures (1902), Queen; Barlasch of the Guard (1903) and The Last Hope (1904).

Bibliography
  • Young Mistley (1888)
  • The Phantom Future (1888)
  • Suspense (1890)
  • Prisoners and Captives (1891)
  • The Slave of the Lamp (1892)
  • From One Generation to Another (1892)
  • Well Meant (1892)
  • Sister (1892)
  • A Pair of Dark Horses (1893)
  • In Countermine B (1893)
  • The Slowcoach (1893)
  • In a Caravan (1893)
  • From Wisdom Court (with Stephen G. Tallentyre, 1893)
  • The Panther (1894)
  • The Haunted Hand (1894)
  • Crab-Appleby (1894)
  • Hand and Heart (1894)
  • Putting Things Right (1894)
  • With Edged Tools (1894)
  • At the Front (1894)
  • A Friend in Need (1895)
  • The Lie That Tony Told (1895)
  • "The Morning Star" (1895)
  • In the Track of the Wandering Jew (1895)
  • The Grey Lady (1895)
  • The Money-Spinner and other Character Notes (with Evelyn Beatrice Hall, 1896)
  • Flotsam (1896)
  • Through the Gate of Tears (1896)
  • The Sowers (1896)
  • A Pariah (1896)
  • The Prodigal's Return (1896)
  • The Carnival in Spain (1896)
  • Last Year's Nest (1896)
  • On the Brink (1896)
  • Of This Generation (1896)
  • After Many Days (1897)
  • In Kedar's Tents (1897)
  • In the Valley of Repose (1898)
  • On the Rocks (1898)
  • Roden's Corner (1898)
  • Dross (1899)
  • Tomaso's Fortune (1899)
  • The Isle of Unrest (1900)
  • A Small World (1900)
  • An Old Custom (1901)
  • The Velvet Glove (1902)
  • The Vultures (1902)
  • Queen (1903)
  • Barlasch of the Guard (1903)
  • The Last Hope (1904)

Uncollected magazine stories:

  • For Juanita's Sake
  • The End of the "Mooroo"
  • Golossa-a-l
  • The Mule
  • In Love and War
  • Stranded
  • In a Crooked Way
  • The Tale of a Scorpion

References
  1. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 26 December 2013.
  2. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 26 December 2013.
  3. Cox, Homer T. (1967). Henry Seton Merriman (Twayne's English Authors Series). New York: Twayne Publishers.
  4. Seccombe, Thomas; rev. Mills, Rebecca (2004). "Scott, Hugh Stowell (1862–1903)". In Mills, Rebecca (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35988. Retrieved 2 May 2015. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (registration required)
  5. Seccombe, Thomas (1912). "Scott, Hugh Stowell" . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 3. pp. 278–279.
  6. "The Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination by Gautam Chakravarty" (PDF). assets.cambridge.org. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  7. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Merriman, Henry Seton" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 173.
  8. "Ethel Frances Hall". Cobbold Family History Trust. Archived from the original on 24 May 2015. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
  9. "Obytuary". nla.gov.au. Retrieved 11 May 2010.
  10. The Advertiser, (Adelaide, SA) March 09, 1904
  11. Buckingham, James Silk; Sterling, John; Maurice, Frederick Denison; Stebbing, Henry; Dilke, Charles Wentworth; Hervey, Thomas Kibble; Dixon, William Hepworth; MacColl, Norman; Rendall, Vernon Horace; Murry, John Middleton (6 November 1897). "Review: In Kedar's Tents by Henry Seton Merriman". The Athenæum (3654): 629–630.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

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