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{{Short description|English novelist, playwright and poet}}

{{Use British English|date=February 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Paul Scott
| image = Paul Scott.jpg
| imagesize =
| caption = Scott in 1977
| pseudonym =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1920|03|25|df=yes}}
| birth_place = London, England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1978|03|01|1920|03|25|df=yes}}
| death_place = London, England
| occupation = author, literary agent
| genre = Fiction, Poetry
| education = Winchmore Hill Collegiate School
| awards = [[Booker Prize]]
| spouse = Nancy Edith Avery
| birth_name = Paul Mark Scott
}}
'''Paul Mark Scott''' (25 March 1920{{snd}} 1 March 1978) was an English novelist best known for his tetralogy ''[[The Raj Quartet]].<ref name=":0" />'' In the last years of his life, his novel ''[[Staying On]]'' won the [[Booker Prize]] (1977). The series of books was [[The Jewel in the Crown (TV series)|dramatised]] by [[Granada Television]] during the 1980s and won Scott the public and critical acclaim that he had not received during his lifetime.

Born in suburban London, Scott was posted to India, Burma and Malaya during [[World War II]]. On return to London he worked as a notable literary agent, before deciding to write full time from 1960. In 1964 he returned to India for a research trip, though he was struggling with ill health and alcoholism. From the material gathered he created the novels that would become ''The Raj Quartet''. In the final years of his life he accepted a visiting professorship at the [[University of Tulsa]], where much of his private archive is held.

==Early life==
Paul Scott was born at 130 Fox Lane in the district of Palmers Green/Southgate, in North London, the younger of two sons. His father, Thomas (1870–1958), was a Yorkshireman who moved to London in the 1920s with family members from Headingley. He was a commercial artist, specialising in drawing for calendars and cards. Scott's mother, Frances, née Mark (1886–1969) was the daughter of a labourer from south London. In later life Scott noted the tension in himself between the pull of his mother's creative ambition and his father's real world, grounded approach to life.<ref name="DNB">Spurling, Hilary. (23 September 2004) [https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-31665;jsessionid=C057C3EF39C199FC334F619C149D5B33 "Scott biography]" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''</ref>

Scott was educated at the private Winchmore Hill Collegiate School, but had to leave early, without any qualifications, as his father's business met financial difficulties.<ref name="Ransom">[https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00118 Paul Scott: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Center] Harry Ransom Center. Accessed August 7, 2022.</ref><ref Name=DNB/> This division from his studies was mirrored through the rest of his life—the battle between the demands of practical needs versus the urge to create. Scott worked as an accounts clerk for C. T. Payne and took evening classes in book-keeping and wrote poetry in his spare time. He later noted that the rigid social hierarchies and codes of his suburban childhood he found echoed in British Indian society.<ref Name=DNB/>

==Military service==
Scott was conscripted into the British Army as a private soldier early in 1940, with the British Intelligence Department.<ref name="OCTL">''The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Literature in English'' (1996) p. 601</ref><ref Name=Ransom/> He trained as a private in [[Torquay]] with the 8th Battalion, "The Buffs." During this time two of his aunts were killed in an air raid.

{{Quote box |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right|width=300px
|quote =<poem>
He had been initially appalled by what he found on the subcontinent—by the heat, dust, poverty, disease, and overcrowding, above all by the imperial attitudes of the British—but over the next three years he fell deeply in love with India.
</poem>|source =<ref Name=DNB/> Biographer Hilary Spurling }}

In 1943, at the age of 22, Scott was posted as a [[Officer (armed forces)|commissioned officer]] in India, and he sailed on the ''Athlone Castle'' from Liverpool that year.<ref Name=Ransom/><ref name=":1">Banerjee, Jacqueline "Paul Scott," ''Writers and Their Work''. Plymouth: Northcote House/British Council, 1998. p. 11-16.</ref> He quicky came down with [[amoebic dysentery]], not diagnosed until 1964.<ref name="Ransom" /> The disease may have had some effect on his character and writing.<ref Name=Ransom/> He joined the [[Indian Army Service Corps]] and became familiar with life at hill stations such as [[Abbottabad]] and [[Murree]].<ref name=":1" /> He made many close friendships with Indian comrades, and literary portraits of his friends appear in his works from this point.<ref name=":1" />

He later helped to organise the logistic support for the [[Fourteenth Army (United Kingdom)|Fourteenth Army]]'s reconquest of [[Burma]]. After the fall of [[Rangoon]] in 1945 he spent time in Calcutta and Kashmir, later posted to Malaya to rout the Japanese occupation; they had, however, already surrendered by the time Scott arrived. In his time away from India he missed the country deeply and longed to return. At the end of the year he rejoined his company at Bihar and sailed back to England, having spent three years in India; times of great tension and conflict for the country.<ref name=":1" /> During his time of service, he continued to write poetry.

==Career==

In 1941, before his military posting, Scott had published a collection of three religious poems entitled ''I, Gerontius'', as part of the Resuram Series of pamphlets. He wrote for ''Country Life'' and ''The Times''. His work was included in ''Poetry Quarterly'' and the poetry anthology ''Poems of this War'' (1942). In 1948 he published ''Pillars of Salt'' in a collection of ''Four Jewish Plays.''<ref name="Ransom" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name="OCTL" />

After demobilisation in 1946, Scott was employed in the two small publishing houses, Falcon Press and Grey Walls Press, headed by the [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] MP [[Peter Baker (British politician)|Peter Baker]].<ref name="LRB">{{Cite news |last=Symons |first=Julian |date=1990-10-25 |title=Paul and Penny |language=en |volume=12 |work=London Review of Books |issue=20 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n20/julian-symons/paul-and-penny |access-date=2022-08-07 |issn=0260-9592}}</ref><ref name="Ransom" /><ref name=":1" />

In 1950 Scott joined [[Pearn, Pollinger & Higham]] as a literary agent (later to split into Pollinger Limited and David Higham Associates) and subsequently became a director. He was described as caring and dedicated in his work: "a prince among agents".<ref name="Ransom" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name="DNB" /> Whilst there, authors he covered included [[Arthur C. Clark]], [[Morris West]], [[M. M. Kaye]], [[Elizabeth David]], [[Mervyn Peake]] and [[Muriel Spark]].<ref name="DNB" /><ref name="Ransom" /> One biographer notes that as an agent. Scott "sheltered nervous talents, supported frail ones, pruned back bogus growth, detected and cherished genuine achievement in the wildest and most undisciplined bolters."<ref name="LRB" />

Scott's first novel, ''Johnny Sahib'', met with 17 rejections from publishers, was eventually released in 1952, coming to win the Eyre & Spottiswoode Literary Fellowship Prize. <ref Name=Ransom/> He continued to work as a literary agent to support his family, but managed to publish regularly. ''The Alien Sky'' (US title, ''Six Days in Marapore'') appeared in 1953, and was followed by ''A Male Child'' (1956), ''The Mark of the Warrior'' (1958), and ''The Chinese Love Pavilion'' (1960). He also wrote radio plays for the BBC: ''Lines of Communication'' (1952), ''Sahibs and Memsahibs'' (1958) and ''The Mark of the Warrior'' (1960).

In 1960 Scott walked away from his steady job as an agent and decided to become a full-time author.<ref name="Ransom" /> He played with various geographic settings in ''Bender'' (1963) and ''Corrida at San Feliu'' 1964) with uneasy results.<ref name="DNB" /> Funded by his publishers, Heinemann, Scott flew to India in 1964, in a last ditch effort to found a career as a successful novelist and solvency. He drew there material for his next five novels, all set in India during and immediately after World War II, in the period leading to independence and [[Partition of India|Partition]].<ref Name=Ransom/><ref name=":0">{{Cite web |title=Paul Scott {{!}} British writer {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Scott |access-date=2022-08-07 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref><ref Name=DNB/> For him, the [[British Raj]] was his extended metaphor. He wrote "I don't think a writer chooses his metaphors. They choose him."<ref Name=DNB/>

{{Quote box |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right|width=300px
|quote =<poem>
Probably only an outsider could have commanded the long, lucid perspectives he brought to bear on the end of the British raj, exploring with passionate, concentrated attention a subject still generally treated as taboo, or fit only for historical romance and adventure stories... However Scott saw things other people would sooner not see, and he looked too close for comfort. His was a bleak, stern, prophetic vision and, like E. M. Forster's, it has come to seem steadily more accurate with time.
</poem>|source = Biographer Hilary Spurling <ref Name=DNB/> }}

During his stay in Bombay he was hosted by Dorothy Ganapathy, whom he was close to for the rest of his life. He spent time in rural Andhra Pradesh with military comrades.<ref name="Vast">{{Cite magazine |last=Green |first=Peter |date=2013-05-17 |title=The Origins of Paul Scott's Vast Masterpiece |magazine=The New Republic |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/112966/origins-paul-scotts-vast-masterpiece |access-date=2022-08-07 |issn=0028-6583}}</ref> His long standing gastric illness was exacerbated by the visit to India, and on his return he had to undergo painful treatment, but afterwards felt better than he had for many years and began to write.<ref Name=Vast/><ref Name=DNB/>

In June 1964, aged 43, Scott began to write ''[[The Jewel in the Crown (novel)|The Jewel in the Crown]]'', the first novel of what was to become ''The Raj Quartet'' (1966).<ref Name=Ransom/> The remaining novels in the sequence were published over the next nine years: ''[[The Day of the Scorpion]]'' (1968), ''[[The Towers of Silence]]'' (1971) and ''[[A Division of the Spoils]]'' (1975).<ref Name=Ransom/> Scott wrote in relative isolation and only visited India twice more during the genesis of ''The Raj Quartet'', in 1968 and in 1972, latterly for the [[British Council]]. He worked in an upstairs room at his home in [[Hampstead]] overlooking the garden and [[Hampstead Garden Suburb]] woodland. He supplemented his earnings from his books with reviews for ''[[The Times]]'', the ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'', ''[[New Statesman]]'' and ''[[Country Life (magazine)|Country Life]].''

Scott's daughter noted, "It was as if he had exiled himself to the one room where there was nothing but the typewriter and the blank page... It was the making of him as a writer, but the unmaking of him as a human being."<ref name="Smith">Ackerman, Karl. "Paul Scott: A Life of the Author of the Raj Quartet", ''The Smithsonian'', February. 23: 11 (February 1993) </ref>

In 1976 and 1977, the last two years of his life, Scott was invited to be a visiting professor at the [[University of Tulsa]] in [[Oklahoma]].<ref name="OCTL" /><ref>"In the footsteps of Paul Scott", 21 October 1990 ''Sunday Times''</ref> The financial offer was a great relief after his endless financial anxieties of his writing career. The University of Texas supported the author by offering to buy his manuscripts. <ref name=Harvard/> His [[coda (music)|coda]] to ''The Raj Quartet'', ''[[Staying On]]'', was published in 1977, just before his second visit to Tulsa. ''Staying On'' won the ''[[Yorkshire Post]]'' Fiction Award and the [[Booker Prize]] in 1977. Scott was too unwell to attend the Booker ceremony in November 1977.

==Adaptations==
[[Granada Television]] showed ''Staying On'', with [[Trevor Howard]] and [[Celia Johnson]] as Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy. The success of its first showing in Britain in December 1981 encouraged Granada to embark on the much greater project of making ''[[The Raj Quartet]]'' into a major 14-part television series known as ''[[The Jewel in the Crown (TV series)|The Jewel in the Crown]]'', first broadcast in the United Kingdom in early 1984 and subsequently in the United States and many [[Commonwealth of Nations|Commonwealth]] countries.<ref Name=OCTL/> It was rebroadcast in the UK in 1997 as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Indian independence, and in 2001 the [[British Film Institute]] voted it 22nd in the all-time best British television programmes. It was also adapted as a nine-part [[BBC Radio 4]] dramatisation under its original title in 2005.

==Legacy==
While Scott was teaching creative writing at the University of Tulsa in 1976, he arranged to sell his private correspondence to that university's McFarlin Library, thus making available some 6,000 personal letters.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Collection: Paul Scott papers, 1940-1978 {{!}} The University of Tulsa Archival Catalog |url=https://utulsa.as.atlas-sys.com/repositories/2/resources/299 |access-date=2022-08-07 |website=utulsa.as.atlas-sys.com}}</ref> The materials begin in 1940, when Scott was enlisted in the British Army, and end only a few days before his death on 1 March 1978.<ref name=":2" />

In the David Higham Collection at the [[Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center]] at the [[University of Texas at Austin]] can be found Scott's correspondence with clients [[Arthur C. Clarke]], [[M. M. Kaye]], [[Muriel Spark]], children's author Mary Patchett, [[Peter Green (historian)|Peter Green]], [[Morris West]], [[Gabriel Fielding]] and [[John Braine]].<ref name="Ransom" />

Hilary Spurling wrote a full biography of Scott in 1991. Janis Haswell edited a two-volume collection of Scott’s letters; ''Volume I, The Early Years (1940–1965)'' covers the military period of his life and the first stage of his career, before the quartet of novels was published. ''Volume II, The Quartet and Beyond (1966–1978)'' covers the end of his life. <ref name=Harvard>[https://harvardreview.org/book-review/behind-paul-scotts-raj-quartet-a-life-in-letters-volumes-i-ii/ "Behind Paul Scott's Raj Quarter"],''Harvard Review'', 10 October 2013</ref>

== Personal life ==
In Torquay in 1941 Scott met and married his wife Penny (born Nancy Edith Avery in 1914). At the time she was a nurse at the Rosehill Children's Hospital. Later she became a novelist herself.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="Ransom" /> They had two daughters, Carol (born 1947) and Sally (born 1948).<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lask |first=Thomas |date=1978-03-03 |title=Paul Scott, Novelist, Is Dead at 57; A Briton Known for 'Raj Quartet' |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/03/archives/paul-scott-novelist-is-dead-at-57-a-briton-known-for-raj-quartet.html |access-date=2020-03-28 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

Towards the end of his life, Scott stated to his doctor that he was "eating little, sleeping less, and drinking a quart of vodka a day." Writer Peter Green wrote of his meeting with Scott: "In 1975, though still only in his mid-fifties, he was a dying man, and knew it. He was "an alcoholic wreck."<ref name="Vast" /> Scott's wife Penny had supported him throughout the writing of ''[[The Raj Quartet]]'', despite his heavy drinking and violent behaviour, but once it was complete she left him and filed for divorce.

In 1977, while he was in Tulsa, Scott was diagnosed with [[colon cancer]]. He died at the [[Middlesex Hospital]] in London on 1 March 1978.<ref name="OCTL" />
==References==
{{reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
*Badiga, V. R. ''Paul Scott: His Art and Vision'' (New Delhi: Atlantic, 1994) {{ISBN|978-8171564477}}
*Baneth-Noualhetas, Emilienne L. ''Le Roman Anglo-Indien: de Kipling à Paul Scott'' (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1999) {{ISBN|9782878541786}}
*Bonheim, Jill. ''Paul Scott: Humanismus und Individualismus in seinem Werk'' (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1982) {{ISBN|978-3820459951}}
*Bose, Sujit. ''Attitudes to Imperialism: Kipling, Forster, and Paul Scott'' (Delhi: Amar Prakashan, 1990) {{ISBN|9788185061924}}
*Childs, Peter. ''Paul Scott's Raj Quartet: History and Division. English Literary Studies Monograph Series 7'' (Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1998) {{ISBN|978-0920604618}}
*Gascoine, M. M. and Bamber, Taylor et al. ''The Making of The Jewel in the Crown'' (New York: St Martin's Press, 1983) {{ISBN|978-0246120892}}
*Gorra, Michael. ''After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie. New edition'' (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997) {{ISBN|978-0226304755}}
*Haswell, Janis E. ''Behind Paul Scott's Raj Quartet: A Life in Letters. The Early Years (1940–1965)'' (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2011) {{ISBN|9781604977493}}
*Haswell, James E. ''Behind Paul Scott's Raj Quartet: A Life in letters. The Quartet and Beyond (1966–1978)'' (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2011) {{ISBN|978-1604977509}}
*Haswell, Janis E. "Paul Scott’s Philosophy of Place(S): The Fiction of Relationality." ''Studies in Twentieth-Century British Literature vol. 5.'' (New York: Peter Lang, 2002) {{ISBN|9780820456799}}
*Hoffman, Barbara. ''Paul Scott's Raj Quartet: Fiktion und geschichtsschreibung'' (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1982 [Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 14, Angelsächsische Sprache und Literatur]) {{ISBN|978-3820457421}}
*Kohli, Indira. ''Paul Scott: His Art and Ideas'' (Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1987)
*Lennard, John. "Paul Scott", ''World Writers in English'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004), II.645–64.
*Mahajan, Chhaya. ''Women in Paul Scott's Novels'' (Bangalore: Ultra Publications, 1997) {{ISBN|978-8190099813}}
*Moore, Robin. ''Paul Scott's Raj'' (London: Heinemann, 1990) {{ISBN|978-0434475889}}
*"Paul Scott", ''India in Mind: An Anthology. Pankaj Misra, ed.'' (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), pp. 275–289. {{ISBN|978-0375727450}}
*Rao, K. Bhaskara. ''Paul Scott'' (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980) {{ISBN|9780805767735}}
*[[Hilary Spurling|Spurling, Hilary.]] ''Paul Scott: A Life'' (London: Hutchinson, 1990) {{ISBN|978-0712650328}}
*Spurling, Hilary. ''Paul Scott: A Life of the Author of the Raj Quartet.'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 1990) {{ISBN|9780393029383}}
*Strobi, Gerwin. ''The Challenge of Cross-cultural Interpretation in the Anglo-Indian Novel: the Raj Revisited. Salzburg English and American Studies, 3'' (Lewiston, New York: Mellen, 1995) {{ISBN|9780773441903}}
*Swinden, Patrick. ''Paul Scott: Images of India'' (London: Macmillan, 1980) {{ISBN|9780333277409}}
*Tedesco [Haswell], Janis and Popham, Janet. ''An Introduction to The Raj Quartet'' (Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1985) {{ISBN|9780819145703}}
*Verma, Anil Kumar. ''Paul Scott: A Critical Study of His Novels'' (New Delhi: Radha Publications, 1999) {{ISBN|978-8174871497}}
*Weinbaum, Francine S. "Aspiration and Betrayal in Paul Scott's Raj Quartet," A doctoral dissertation (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois, 1976)
*Weinbaum, Francine S. ''Paul Scott: A Critical Study'' (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992) {{ISBN|9780292765399}}
*Weinbaum, Francine S. "Paul Scott' India: The Raj Quartet", ''Critique 20'' (1978): 100–110
*Weinbaum, Francine S. "Psychological Defenses and Thwarted Union", ''Literature and Psychology'' 31 (1981): 75–87
*Weinbaum, Francine S. "Staying on After the Raj", ''Journal of South Asian Literature'' 17 (1982): 225–229

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070721135348/http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/uk/pscott/chron.html ''A Paul Scott Chronology'']
{{Raj Quartet}}
{{Booker Prize}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scott, Paul}}
[[Category:1920 births]]
[[Category:1978 deaths]]
[[Category:Military personnel from London]]
[[Category:Booker Prize winners]]
[[Category:British Army personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:Writers in British India]]
[[Category:British Indian Army officers]]
[[Category:Deaths from cancer in England]]
[[Category:Deaths from colorectal cancer]]
[[Category:People from Southgate, London]]
[[Category:Writers from London]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:Intelligence Corps soldiers]]
[[Category:Indian Army personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:20th-century English poets]]

Paul Scott (novelist) - Revision history

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