Catherine Amy Dawson Scott
| Catherine Amy Dawson Scott | |
|---|---|
Catherine Amy Dawson Scott
|
|
| Born |
August 1865 Dulwich |
| Died | 4 November 1934 (aged 69) |
| Occupation | Writer, playwright, poet |
| Nationality | British |
| Literary movement | Co-founder of International PEN |
| Notable works | The Haunting |
Catherine Amy Dawson Scott (August 1865 – 4 November 1934) was an English writer, playwright and poet. She is best known as a co-founder (in 1921) of International PEN, a worldwide association of writers.
Born to Ebenezer Dawson, a brick manufacturer and his wife Catherine Armstrong. Her sister, Ellen M. Dawson, was born about 1868. Henry Dawson Lowry (Cornwall) was her cousin. Catherine Amy's mother died in January 1877, when the girl was 11 and her younger sister 7. In 1878, their father re-married and by 1881, the girls and their stepmother were living or staying with her widowed mother, Sarah Ancell, in Camberwell, where Catherine A. Dawson graduated from Anglo German College.
At 18, she began working as a secretary, while also writing. Her "Charades For Home Acting" (44 pp.) was published by Woodford Fawcett and Co. in 1888, then "Sapho", an epic poem 210 pages long, was published by Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. in 1889, at her own expense. She followed with "Idylls of Womanhood", a collection of poems published by William Heinemann in 1892. She did not marry until she was 33, to a medical doctor Horatio Francis Ninian Scott. They lived in London (Hanover Square), where their first child, Marjorie Catharine W. Scott, was born in 1899, then a son, Horatio Christopher L. Scott, in March 1901. Then the family moved to West Cowes on the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1902, where they lived for the next seven years and another child, Walter Scott, nicknamed Toby, was born in June 1904. Mrs. Dawson-Scott freed completely from daily household duties after the birth of the third child, enjoying the more relaxed country life, started writing again and in 1906, at 41, published her first novel "The Story of Anna Beames" under a pen name of Mrs. Sappho. Two years later came her second novel, "The Burden", under her name of C.A. Dawson Scott. She was becoming so productive that she produced seven more books in six years until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, including in 1909 "Treasure Trove", "The Agony Column", and in 1910 "Madcap Jane". Then in 1910, the Scott family moved back closer to London and Mrs Dawson-Scott could join London's literary circle, now an author with a few publications to her name. A few more came: "Mrs Noakes, An Ordinary Woman" and a guide (with map) called "Nooks And Corners of Cornwall" in 1911. In 1912 Mrs Dawson-Scott met poet Charlotte Mary Mew, who supposedly had read her "Macap Jane". In the summer of 1913, Catherine Dawson-Scott asked Charlotte Mew to her home in Southall to recite a few poems to a small group of acquaintances — but the self-conscious poet only consented a year later, and the reading on 16 March 1914 was a great success, the mystic poet Evelyn Underhill apparently getting journalist and critic Rolfe Scott-James, then the time editor of the highly regarded New Weekly, interested in Mew, as her ‘Fame’ did appear in the magazine in May — only two months after her reading. At that time, Dawson-Scott was also engaged in, or had just finished, editing the poems of her deceased cousin, Henry Dawson Lowry, and writing her own poems. When World War I broke out, her husband was enlisted into the Royal Army Medical Corps and was sent to France while Catherine A., with the support of the British secretary of state for war Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, is credited with the creation of the Woman's Defence Relief Corps in late August 1914. The corps was made up of two divisions: civil section, to substitute women for men in factories and other places of employment in order to free those men for military service; and a “semi-military” or “good citizen” section, for active recruitment of women for the armed forces, to be trained in drilling, marching and the use of arms so they could protect themselves and their loved ones on the home front in case of enemy invasion. In effect, in the spring of 1915 members of the Corp started working on the land, and in 1916, 465 women were organized in squads for land work, to be exploited as casual labor. Later, her husband began to suffer from depression and eventually they divorced. Dr Scott reportedly went on to commit suicide.
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