Henry Seton Merriman Manuscript

Collection

Identifier: MSS 0165

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This original holograph manuscript of A Small World is a tale about an American injured in Spain and the woman who nurses him back to health. It was collected in Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories in 1904.

Dates

undated

Creator

Merriman, Henry Seton (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright is retained by the creators of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information. Please see our Sensitive Materials Statement.

Biographical or Historical Information

Henry Seton Merriman was the pseudonym of novelist Hugh Stowell Scott (1862-1903). He was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, and afterwards at Vevey and Wiesbaden, then placed by his father in an underwriter's office at Lloyd's in London at the age of eighteen.

The business life proved distasteful to Scott, and he longed to travel abroad and study foreign cultures. This spurred Scott to try his hand at writing romances; his first experiment was Young Mistley, which he submitted to Bentley and published anonymously in 1888 in two volumes. With his next book, The Phantom Future (1889), Scott adopted the pseudonym of Henry Seton Merriman in order to evade the disapproval of his family, and he used the same name for the entirety of his publishing career.

At his death Scott was one of the most widely read novelists of his day; his success under a pseudonym led several imposters to represent themselves as the authors of his most widely circulated books. Scott died prematurely after an attack of appendicitis in 1903.

Extent

0.01 Linear Feet (1 folder)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Henry Seton Merriman was the pseudonym of novelist Hugh Stowell Scott (1862-1903). This original holograph manuscript of A Small World is a tale about an American injured in Spain and the woman who nurses him back to health.

Method of Acquisition

Purchased from David J. Holmes, Autographs, PO Box 548, Collingswood, NJ, November 2000.

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