View source for Catherine Amy Dawson Scott

{{Short description|English writer, playwright and poet (1865–1934)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2015}}
{{Use British English|date=December 2015}}
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] -->
| name = Catherine Amy Dawson Scott
| image = Catherine Amy Dawson Scott.jpg
| imagesize =
| alt = Portrait photo of Catherine Amy Dawson Scott. She is pale with dark darly hair that falls to her chin, a slight smile on her face as she gazes off toward the left, and is wearing an ornate flower hat, beaded necklace, and possibly a cardigan over a dress.
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| pseudonym   = Mrs. Sappho; C. A. Dawson Scott
| birth_name  =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1865|8|}}
| birth_place = [[Dulwich]], England
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1934|11|4|1865|8|}}
| death_place =
| occupation = Writer, playwright, poet
| nationality = British
| ethnicity =
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| subject =
| movement = Co-founder of<br/>[[English PEN]]
| notableworks = ''The Haunting''
| spouse = Horatio Francis Ninian Scott
| partner =
| children = Marjorie, Horatio, Edward
| relatives = [[Henry Dawson Lowry]] (cousin)
| influences =
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'''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 [[English PEN]], one of the world's first non-governmental organisations and among the first international bodies advocating for human rights, and the founding centre of [[PEN International]], a worldwide association of writers.<ref>[https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/teaching/pen/human-rights/ International Human Rights: PEN Teaching Guides.]</ref><ref name = "HRC1">[https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=01209 PEN (Organization): An Inventory of its Records at the Harry Ransom Center.]</ref> In her later years she became a keen [[Spiritualism (movement)|spiritualist]].<ref>Kemp, Sandra; Mitchell, Charlotte; Trotter, David. (1997). ''Edwardian Fiction: An Oxford Companion''. Oxford University Press. p. 92.</ref>
==Early life and education==
She was born in 1865 in [[Dulwich]] 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 she was 11 and her younger sister was seven years old.Their father remarried in 1878 and by 1881, the girls and their stepmother were living or staying with her widowed mother, Sarah Ancell, in [[Camberwell]],<ref name="studymore.org.uk">{{cite web|url=http://studymore.org.uk/ymew.htm#CatherineAmyDawsonScott|title=Charlotte Mew Chronology with mental, historical and geographical connections linking with her own words, and listing her essays, stories, poems and friends.|website=Studymore.org.uk|access-date=27 October 2016}}</ref> where Catherine A. Dawson graduated from Anglo German College.<ref name="woodlandway.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.woodlandway.org/PDF/17.PSYPIONEERFoundedbyLesliePrice.pdf|title=Woodlandway|website=Woodlandway.org|access-date=3 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180703210410/http://www.woodlandway.org/PDF/17.PSYPIONEERFoundedbyLesliePrice.pdf|archive-date=3 July 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref>
==Career==
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. ''Sappho'', an [[Epic poetry|epic poem]] 210 pages long, was published by [[Kegan Paul, Trench and Company|Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.]] in 1889, at her own expense. She followed with ''Idylls of Womanhood'', a collection of poetry published by [[William Heinemann]] in 1892.
At the age of 33, she married a medical doctor named Horatio Francis Ninian Scott. They lived in [[Hanover Square, London|Hanover Square]], London, where their first child, Marjorie Catharine Waiora Scott, was born in 1899; they also had a son, Horatio Christopher L. Scott, born 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. Another child, Edward Walter Lucas Scott, nicknamed Toby, was born in June 1904.
Catherine Dawson Scott, freed from daily household duties after the birth of the third child, found country life stifling and missed the literary culture of London. She resumed writing and in 1906, at age 41, published her first novel, ''The Story of Anna Beames'' under the pen name "Mrs. Sappho". Two years later she published her second novel, ''The Burden'', under the name C.A. Dawson Scott.
She produced seven more books in six years until the outbreak of [[World War I]] in 1914, including in 1909 ''Treasure Trove'' (1909), ''The Agony Column'' (1909), and ''Madcap Jane'' (1910). In 1910, the Scott family moved back closer to London, enabling Dawson Scott to join London's literary circle.<ref name="chinesepen.org">{{cite web|url=http://www.chinesepen.org/english/founding-history-of-pen-international|title=Founding History of PEN International - Independent Chinese PEN Center|website=Chinesepen.org|date=25 July 2011 |access-date=27 October 2016}}</ref> Dawson Scott continued to write and publish works, including ''Mrs Noakes, An Ordinary Woman'' (1911) and a guide (with map) titled ''Nooks And Corners of Cornwall'' (1911).
In 1912, Dawson Scott met poet [[Charlotte Mary Mew]], who has reportedly read ''Macdap Jane''.<ref name="studymore.org.uk" /> 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. Mew's reading on 16 March 1914 attracted the attention of the mystic poet [[Evelyn Underhill]], who introduced Mew to the journalist and critic Rolfe Scott-James, then editor of the ''New Weekly''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.rlf.org.uk/showcase/a-self-among-the-crowd/|title=Julia Copus essay: 'A Self Among the Crowd'|website=Rlf.org.uk|access-date=27 October 2016}}</ref> 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.
At the start of World War I broke out, her husband entered the [[Royal Army Medical Corps]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/28880/supplement/6780/data.pdf|title=0780 SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 26 August 1914|website=Thegazette.co.uk|access-date=3 July 2018}}</ref> and was sent to [[France in World War I|France]]<ref name="chinesepen.org" /> while Dawson Scott, with the support of the British secretary of state for war [[Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener]], created the [[Women's Defence Relief Corps]] in late August 1914. The corps had two divisions: civil section, to substitute [[Woman|women]] for [[Man|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]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/women-join-british-war-effort|title=Women join British war effort - Aug 29, 1914 |website=History.com|access-date=27 October 2016}}</ref> In effect, thousands of women were sent to perform land work, exploited as casual, volunteer labour.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30077029|title=badge, civilian, British, Women's Defence Relief Corps|website=Iwm.org.uk|access-date=27 October 2016}}</ref> When C. A. Dawson Scott and Dr. Scott returned from their military placements, they found it impossible to resume their relationship as before, after the traumatic (and alternately empowering, for Dawson Scott) experience of the war. Eventually, after 20 years of marriage, they divorced. Dr. Scott died by [[suicide]] in 1922.<ref name="thetablet.co.uk">{{cite web|url=http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/12th-december-1987/16/founder-of-the-pen|title=Founder Of The Pen - from the Tablet Archive|website=Archive.thetablet.co.uk|access-date=27 October 2016|archive-date=19 January 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119235236/http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/12th-december-1987/16/founder-of-the-pen|url-status=dead}}</ref>
In the spring of 1917, Dawson Scott founded the To-Morrow Club, which aimed to draw the "writers of tomorrow", i.e. the "literary youth", and connect them with established writers to exchange ideas, advice, and comments.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dawson Scott|first=C. A|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/702138298|title=C.A. Dawson Scott - Marjorie Watts papers|date=1913|language=English|oclc=702138298}}</ref> Dawson Scott would sometimes invite the literary agents and editors she knew to attend Club dinners, while encouraging the young writers to meet them. The dinner meetings-cum-lectures soon became a weekly event. At the same time, Dawson Scott continued writing; she published the novel ''Wastralls'' in 1918, with which she resumed a prolific pattern of publishing a book nearly every year.
Catherine A. Dawson Scott remains best known founding in 1921 of the [[English PEN|P.E.N.]] Club, a successor to the To-Morrow Club, and the founding centre of [[PEN International]], a worldwide association of writers. The PEN Club dedicated itself to fostering a community of writers who would defend the role of literature in an ever-evolving society.<ref name="thetablet.co.uk" /> [[John Galsworthy]] was asked to serve as PEN Club's first President and for most of the 1920s, Dawson Scott's daughter, Marjorie, served as its secretary.<ref name="chinesepen.org" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.camdenreview.com/node/987155|title=Slideshow: Memories of a Wartime Childhood. By Marjorie Ann Watts - Camden Review|website=Camdenreview.com|access-date=27 October 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160917025038/http://www.camdenreview.com/node/987155|archive-date=17 September 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> PEN was a shortened acronym for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists, and though it was intended as apolitical, both its membership and leadership has been [[left-leaning]].<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://erea.revues.org/256|title=Margaret Storm Jameson and the London PEN Centre: Mobilising Commitment|journal=E-rea|first=Jennifer|last=Birkett|date=15 October 2006|volume=4|issue=2|access-date=27 October 2016|via=erea.revues.org|doi=10.4000/erea.256|doi-access=free}}</ref>
In addition to her organizing activities and original writing, Dawson adapted her 1921 novel ''The Haunting'', in conjunction with some of her cousin [[Henry Dawson Lowry|Henry Dawson Lowry's]] writing, into the [[libretto]] for the opera ''Gale'' by [[Ethel Leginska]]. The opera premiered in [[Chicago]] at the [[Civic Opera House (Chicago)|Civic Opera House]], with [[John Charles Thomas]] in the lead, on 23 November 1935.<ref name="Griffel2012">{{cite book|author=Margaret Ross Griffel|author-link=Margaret Ross Griffel|title=Operas in English: A Dictionary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y8bQAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA230|date=21 December 2012|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-8325-3|page=230}}</ref>
==Psychical research==
In Dawson Scott's book ''From Four Who Are Dead: Messages to C. A. Dawson Scott'' (1926), she writes that "certain small, unusual faculties had begun to develop" by her late 30s.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|last=|first=|title=Dawson Scott, Catharine Amy, (died 4 Nov. 1934)|date=2007-12-01|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u208426|work=Who Was Who|volume=|pages=22|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u208426|access-date=}}</ref> She noted that, while resting after a meal, she realized she could amuse herself by closing her eyes, thus seeing a dark tunnel in her head, and then exploring that tunnel. After a woman she had known lost her husband, Dawson Scott asserted that she had [[psychic]] powers to communicate with the dead. She supported this notion by elevating the legacy of her grandfather's cousin, the spiritualist [[Edmund Dawson Rogers]], who co-founded the [[British National Association of Spiritualists]], founded and edited the spiritualist journal ''[[Light (spiritualist journal)|Light]]'', and co-founded the [[Society for Psychical Research]] in the latter part of the 19th century.
In 1929, Dawson Scott founded The Survival League, a spiritualist organization which sought to unite all religions to study psychical research. H. Dennis Bradley was its first chairman.<ref>Nelson, G. K. (2013 edition). ''Spiritualism and Society (Routledge Revivals)''. Routledge. p. 160. {{ISBN|978-0-415-71462-4}}</ref> Dawson Scott wrote, "Many members of my family had [...] seen phantasms, and [[Aura (paranormal)|auras]], had had prophetic dreams and so on."<ref name=":0" /> She went on to serve as the Organising Secretary for the successor to The Survival League, the [[International Institute for Psychical Research]]. The IIPR had been formed in 1934 "for the purpose of investigating psychic phenomena on strictly scientific lines."<ref name="woodlandway.org"/> The group met for tea and to hold spiritualist [[Séance|seances]] and discuss possible methods of investigation, as well as individual cases.<ref name="woodlandway.org"/>
==Works==
*''Charades for Home Acting''. (1888)
*''Sappho. A Poem'' (1889)
*''Madcap Jane or Youth''. [[Thomas Nelson (publisher)|T. Nelson & Sons]] (1890)
*''Idylls of Womanhood''. Poems. (1892)
*''The Story of Anna Beames'' (1907)
*''The Burden''. (1908)
*''Nooks & Corners of [[Cornwall]]''. (1911)
*''Alice Bland, and The Golden Ball. Two one act plays'' (1912)
*''Tom, Cousin Mary, and Red Riding Hood. Three One Act Plays'' (1912)
*''Beyond. Poems''. (1912)
*''Wastralls''. [[Heinemann (book publisher)|W. Heinemann]] (1918)
*''The Headland''. Heinemann (1920)
*''The Rolling Stone''. [[Alfred A. Knopf|A.A. Knopf]] (1920)
*''The Haunting'' (1921). (New edition: Tabb House (March 1985), {{ISBN|0-907018-38-6}})
*''Bitter Herbs. Poems''. A.A. Knopf (1923)
*''The Turn of a Day''. [[Henry Holt and Company|H. Holt]] (1925)
*''The Vampire. A Book of Cornish and Other Stories''. R. Holden & Co., Ltd (1925)
*''Blown by the Wind'' (1926)
*''From Four Who Are Dead: Messages to C. A. Dawson Scott'' (1926)
*(as editor with [[Ernest Rhys]]): ''Twenty-Seven Humorous Tales'' (1926)
*(with Ernest Rhys): ''26 Adventure Stories, Old and New.'' (1929)
*(as editor with Ernest Rhys): ''Mainly Horses. Tales by Various Authors.'' (1929)
*''The Seal Princess''. [[George Philip & Son Ltd]] (1930)
*(as editor): ''The Guide to Psychic Knowledge'' (1932)
*''The House In The Hollow Or Tender Love''. Benn (1933)
==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{refbegin}}
*Marjorie Watts: ''P.E.N. The early years, 1921–1926''. Archive Press Ltd, 1971
*Marjorie Watts: ''Mrs Sappho: The Life of C.A. Dawson Scott, Mother of International P.E.N.''. Duckwort 1987, {{ISBN|0-7156-2183-1}}
*Yopie Prins: ''Victorian Sappho''. Princeton University Press 1999, {{ISBN|0-691-05919-5}} ([https://books.google.com/books?id=CT4SVonEVXcC&pg=PA239&dq=Amy+Dawson+PEN&lr=&sig=si0o3yFHyWtiE_ImVl2LTrAbbXA#PPA239,M1  restricted online version (Google Books)])
{{refend}}
==External links==
* {{Gutenberg author | id=37217| name=C. A. Dawson Scott}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Catherine Amy Dawson Scott}}
*[http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090706072125/http%3A//www.internationalpen.org.uk/go/about%2Dus/history History of PEN]
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{{succession box|before=|title=International President of [[PEN International]]|after=[[John Galsworthy]]|years=1921–1933}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dawson Scott, Catherine Amy}}
[[Category:1865 births]]
[[Category:1934 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century English dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:19th-century English women writers]]
[[Category:19th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:19th-century English poets]]
[[Category:19th-century English short story writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:20th-century English short story writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century English poets]]
[[Category:British parapsychologists]]
[[Category:English women short story writers]]
[[Category:English short story writers]]
[[Category:English spiritual mediums]]
[[Category:English women dramatists and playwrights]]
[[Category:English women novelists]]
[[Category:English women poets]]
[[Category:PEN International]]
[[Category:People from Dulwich]]
[[Category:Writers from the London Borough of Southwark]]