Idylls of Womanhood: His kiss of betrothal yet burned on my tremulous lips

Catherine Amy Dawson Scott was born in Dulwich, London on an unknown date in August 1865.

Her mother died when she was 11 and the following year her father remarried, and the family found itself in nearby Camberwell. Catherine later graduated from the Anglo German College.

At 18, she began work as a secretary. She had literary ambitions and soon set to work writing ‘Charades For Home Acting’. An epic 210 page poem ‘Sappho’, was published the following year and then ‘Idylls of Womanhood’ in 1892.

At 33 she married a medical doctor, Horatio Francis Ninian Scott, with whom she would have 3 children.

It was only in the early 1900’s that she got back to a literary career. This time it was novels with ‘The Story of Anna Beames’ (1906) and then 8 books in 8 years until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In 1910, the Scott family moved back closer to London, enabling her to join London's literary circle.

When World War I broke out, and her husband sent to France, Catherine helped create the Women's Defence Relief Corps. The corps had two divisions: civil, to replace men with women in factories and other places of employment and a ‘semi-military/good citizen’ section, for recruitment of women to the armed forces, to be trained in drilling, marching and the use of arms so they could protect themselves and their families on the home front in case of invasion.

When she and her husband attempted to settle down again after the war they found it impossible to resume their relationship. After 20 years of marriage, they divorced. Dr Scott committed suicide in 1922.

In the spring of 1917, Catherine started the To-Morrow Club to find the ‘writers of tomorrow’ and connect them with established writers to exchange ideas, advice, and comments. She also invited literary agents and editors to attend Club dinners and to encourage the young writers to meet them. At the same time Catherine returned to writing and continued to publish a book each year.

She remains best known for helping to found the International PEN Club in 1921, a successor to the To-Morrow Club, and to foster a community of writers to defend the role of literature in an ever-changing society. John Galsworthy was its first President. PEN was a shortened acronym for Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists.

Catherine also adapted her 1921 novel ‘The Haunting’ into the libretto for the opera ‘Gale’ by Ethel Leginska. It premiered in Chicago on 23td November 1935.

In 1926 Catherine was writing that certain unusual faculties had begun to develop. Spiritualism had been very popular amongst the literary set for several decades and Catherine now claimed she had psychic powers to communicate with the dead. It was a subject she immersed herself in.

In 1929, Catherine founded The Survival League, a spiritualist organization which sought to unite all religions to study psychical research. She went on to serve as the Organising Secretary for the successor to The Survival League, the International Institute for Psychical Research.

Catherine Amy Dawson Scott died on 4th November 1934. She was 69.

© 2021 Portable Poetry (E-bog): 9781839679919

Release date

E-bog: 1. august 2021