Catharine Amy Dawson Scott

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CADS was first a poet; then after a long break in her publishing career she produced almost twenty novels, including works that make her a significant regional novelist of the Cornish coast. She also wrote plays, a travel book, short stories, and books about the occult and her psychic experiences. Both her poetry and fiction express her feminist conviction of the necessity of women's sexual, personal, and financial freedom. Her work was progressive for its era, tackling taboo subjects such as domestic violence, adultery, and premarital sex. She achieved critical commendation, but never a particularly wide readership, and is chiefly remembered today for having founded the literary organization PEN .

Milestones

31 August 1865

Catharine Amy Dawson, who became CADS , was born at the Gothic Lodge in Dulwich, South London.
Watts, Marjorie, and Frances King. Mrs. Sappho. Duckworth.
5
Watts, Marjorie. P.E.N.; The Early Years, 1921-1926. Archive Press.
1

By 10 October 1889

C. A. Dawson (later CADS ) published her 210-page feminist epic poem Sappho, at her own expense with Kegan Paul .
Watts, Marjorie, and Frances King. Mrs. Sappho. Duckworth.
13
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240

By June 1910

CADS published Madcap Jane; or, Youth, the second novel in her Some Wives trilogy (though it bears no direct reference to the others in the trilogy). It had illustrations by Mabel Ince .
Dated from Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.
Scott, Catharine Amy Dawson, and Mabel Ince. Madcap Jane. Chapman and Hall.
title-page

By 9 November 1933

CADS published her final novel, The House in the Hollow, the year before her death.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
1658 (9 November 1933): 776

4 November 1934

CADS died in a London hospital of a duodenal ulcer.
Watts, Marjorie, and Frances King. Mrs. Sappho. Duckworth.
199, 201

Biography

Birth and Background

31 August 1865

Catharine Amy Dawson, who became CADS , was born at the Gothic Lodge in Dulwich, South London.
Watts, Marjorie, and Frances King. Mrs. Sappho. Duckworth.
5
Watts, Marjorie. P.E.N.; The Early Years, 1921-1926. Archive Press.
1