Title: Evelyn Scott & Caroline Gordon Symposium Papers

Date/Date Range :   1985-1987

Extent: 0.1 linear feet

Abstract:

This collection of papers, containing three programs, three tour maps, and a poster with a formerly attached sign, is from "A Hometown Symposium: Evelyn Scott and Caroline Gordon," hosted by Austin Peay University in Clarksville, TN, on November 7-9, 1985. In addition is a Scott bibliography from 1987.

Call number: MS-2501

Repository: University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Knoxville, TN

Aquisition Information:

Collection was a gift from Henry E. Turlington.

Access Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Copyright:

The copyright interests in this collection remain with the creator. For more information, contact the Special Collections Library.

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of Item], Evelyn Scott & Caroline Gordon Symposium Papers, MS-2501. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Special Collections Library.

Collection consists of a single folder.

Evelyn Scott (1893-1963) was born Elsie Dunn in Clarksville, Tennessee. In 1913, Elsie married Frederick Creighton Wellman, and they changed their names to Evelyn Scott and Cyril Kay-Scott. The couple moved to Brazil, where they had one son in 1914, Creighton "Jigg" Scott. After her divorce from Cyril in 1928, Evelyn married novelist John Metcalfe in 1930. Between 1921 and 1941, she wrote several books, including critically acclaimed The Wave and Eva Gay. Her final book The Shadow of the Hawk failed in 1941. Scott became paranoid about the intertwining of political events during the Second World War and the productivity of artists. Evelyn Scott died in 1963, John Metcalfe survived her until 1968.

Caroline Gordon (1895-1981) was born into the Kentucky line of the Meriwether family, which is a major theme of her fiction. She grew up near Clarksville. Her father, James Gordon established an academy in Clarksville, where his daughter received her early education. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bethany College in 1916. Gordon taught and worked as a journalist. She married Allen Tate in 1925, bore a daughter, and began a period of life abroad. (In London Gordon was secretary to the influential British writer Ford Madox Ford.) In 1930 the Tates returned to the United States and settled in Clarksville in a house called "Benfolly" for eight years. Gordon published several stories and novels, including Alec Maury, Sportsman (1934) and None Shall Look Back (1937). In the 1940s they moved near Princeton, where she wrote novels such as The Woman on the Porch (1944) and The Malefactors (1956). The Tates were divorced in 1946, then remarried and co-wrote The House of Fiction (1950). The marriage was permanently dissolved in 1959. Gordon moved in 1973 to teach at the University of Dallas. When her health began to fail in 1978, she moved to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chapas, Mexico, with the her daughter's family, where she died in 1981.

This collection of papers, containing three programs, three tour maps, and a poster with a formerly attached sign, is from "A Hometown Symposium: Evelyn Scott and Caroline Gordon," hosted by Austin Peay University in Clarksville, TN, on November 7-9, 1985. In addition is a Scott bibliography from 1987.

See also Evelyn Scott Collection in MS-2015 and The Evelyn Scott Letters, 1946-1949, in MS-2300. The Peggy Bach Collection (mostly on Evelyn Scott) in MS-2047 and MS-2050 also contains documents from the Scott/Gordon Symposium in 1985.

• Scott, Evelyn, 1893-.
• Gordon, Caroline, 1895-.
• Austin Peay State University.