Hugh Stowell Scott

Hugh Stowell Scott (9 May 1862 – 19 November 1903) was a prominent English novelist who used the pseudonym Henry Seton Merriman. His most successful novel was The Sowers (1896), which went through thirty UK editions.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, he became an underwriter at Lloyd's of London, but then devoted himself to travel and to writing novels, many of which had great popularity. Scott visited India as a tourist in 1877–78 and set his novel Flotsam (1896) there. He was an enthusiastic traveller, many of his journeys being undertaken with his friend and fellow author Stanley J. Weyman.

Scott married Ethel Frances Hall (1865–1943) on 19 June 1889. The couple had no children.

Scott was unusually modest and retiring in character. He died of appendicitis, aged 41, at Melton, Suffolk.

Upon his death, Scott left £5000 to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, his sister-in-law and fellow writer, best known for her biographical work The Friends of Voltaire, writing that the legacy was "in token of my gratitude for her continued assistance and literary advice, without which I should never have been able to have made a living by my pen."

His first novel, Young Mistley was published anonymously in 1888. His other novels include The Phantom Future (the only novel of his set entirely in England, 1889), The Slave of the Lamp (1892), From One Generation to Another (1892), The Sowers (generally considered his best, set in Russia, where it was banned) (1896), In Kedar's Tents (1897),Roden's Corner (1898), Suspense, Dross (1899), Slave of the Lamp, With Edged Tools (a bestseller in 1894), Grey Lady, Isle of Unrest (1900), The Velvet Glove, The Vultures (1902), Queen (1903), Barlasch of the Guard (1903) and The Last Hope (1904). He worked with great care, and his best books held a high place in Victorian fiction.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons.  

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