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On March 25, 1920, Paul Scott was born in Palmers Green, England (north
London), the second son of Tom and Frances Scott. Tom Scott was a self-employed
commercial artist who, together with his two sisters, designed advertisements
for the latest fashions. He came from a family of painters and designers while
his wife, Frances, was from a more humble background. The family lived on the
fringes of middle class respectability and constantly struggled to maintain
their position during this period of rigid social mores. Paul maintained high
grades while in school but at the age of sixteen had to quit Winchmore Hill
Collegiate School in London in order to help the family financially. This was
to affect Paul's self-esteem and presented obstacles to his continuing sense of
himself as a poet. His father suggested he work as an accountant and he thus
apprenticed himself to an accounting firm. He studied in the evenings,
completed exams, and rose to more responsibility and more complex duties. The
dreamy, creative side could not be ignored, however, and he continued to write
poems, read the works of other poets, and developed friendships with other
aspiring poets. |
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In 1940 Scott was drafted to serve in the British Army. In 1941 his
poem,
"I Gerontius," had been included in the
Resuram Series of poetry pamphlets. While stationed in Torquay, he met Penny
Avery, a nurse, at one of the company dances; after a short time they fell in
love and were married on October 23, 1941. In February 1943 Scott received
orders that he was to be stationed in India, and in March sailed from
Liverpool. By the time he arrived it was the beginning of the end for the
British Raj in India. He was as surprised at the superior attitude he observed
in the British toward their Indian subjects, as he was of the hostile and
resentful attitude of the Indian population toward the British, issues Scott
was to explore in depth in his later novels. Shortly after his arrival he came
down with dysentery which was not diagnosed as amoebiasis until 1964, when it
was successfully treated in Paris. The disease had a pronounced effect on Scott
during the twenty years in which the parasite remained in his body; it
accounted for his mood swings, his irritability, lassitude, and feelings of
alienation, and had a marked effect on the style of his writing. |
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After serving with the British Army in India and Malaya as an air supply
officer, Scott returned to London. He had continued to write poetry while in
the Army, and though he thought of himself as a poet first, he began to write
plays and experienced success with
"Pillars of Salt" which won a prize in a
Jewish playwriting competition. It, and the three other winners, were published
in 1948 as
"Four Jewish Plays." Job prospects all over
London were bleak at the time of his return but Scott used his training in
accounting to secure a position as secretary for the Falcon Press and Grey
Walls Press. He left this position in 1950 to become a director and literary
agent for Pearn, Pollinger and Higham (later David Higham Associates) where he
successfully represented writers such as John Braine, Gerald Hanley, Morris
West, M.M. Kaye, Roland Gant, and Chris Almedingen. During those years of
encouraging other writers to do their best, he wrote five novels himself but
felt torn by the demands of his job and his desire to devote more time to his
own writing, and thus resigned in 1960 to work at his craft full time. |
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Scott's first novel,
Johnnie Sahib, was rejected seventeen times
before being published in 1952, and went on to win the Eyre & Spottiswoode
Literary Fellowship Prize. This was followed by
Alien Sky, published in 1953. India had
penetrated Scott's heart deeply; most of his novels are set in India, or use
India as a backdrop, as in
A Male Child (1956),
The Mark of the Warrior (1958), and
The Chinese Love Pavilion (1960). Two radio
scripts were produced at this time:
"Sahibs & Memsahibs" was broadcast in the
summer of 1958, and
"The Mark of the Warrior" in 1960.
The Alien Sky aired on B.B.C. television in
London in 1956. |
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The Birds of Paradise (1962) continued
Scott's preoccupation with India, whereas
The Bender (1963) is set solely in London
and explores the importance of work in defining one's role in life and in
society.
The Corrida at San Felíu (1964) uses
fragments of the life story of a novelist, Edward Thornhill, to piece together
the artist's world of the creative imagination in which illusion and fact often
vie with each other. |
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Scott returned to India in 1964 and from that visit came the raw
material he needed to write his next five novels, all of which centered on the
end of British rule in India. The first four novels,
The Jewel in the Crown (1966),
The Day of the Scorpion (1968),
The Towers of Silence (1971), and
A Division of the Spoils (1975) comprise
"The Raj Quartet." The fifth and final novel,
Staying On (1977), which is a coda to the
Raj Quartet, centers on the lives of the British who elected to remain in India
after independence. Scott won the Yorkshire Post book of the year award for
finest fiction in 1971 for
The Towers of Silence, and the Booker Prize
in 1977 for
Staying On. Scott taught writing and modern
literature at the University of Tulsa in the fall terms of 1976 and 1977. Paul
Scott died from cancer on March 1, 1978 in London. |
