Essay, Biography or Paragraph on “Paul (Mark) Scott” great author complete biography for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Paul (Mark) Scott

(1920 – 1978 )

Paul Scott was born in suburban North London. He was educated at Winchmore Hill Collegiate School, but was forced to abandon his studies at the age of 16 when the family’s money ran out. Scott started a career in accountancy and met an aesthetic estate agent called Gerald Armstrong, who became his lover. During these years he read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had a profound and lasting influence upon him. In 1941 he married Elisabeth Avery, who became a novelist. They were separated when Scott was sent to India as an air supply officer. Scott arrived in Bombay in 1943 without much knowledge of the country. He served in India and Malaya (1943 -1946) and during this period wrote some poems and plays. After returning to England, with amebiasis, from which he suffered some 20 years, he settled in London with his family and worked as bookkeeper for the Falcon and Grey Walls Press. Muriel Spark caricatured the publishing house in A Far Cry for Kensington From 1960 scott devoted him-self entirely to writing, but it took many years before he started to gain recognition.

As many as 17 publishers rejected Scott’s first novel, Johnnie Sahib, before its publication in 1952. The Alien Sky (1953) was adapted for radio and television. Scott’s early works received mixed criticism and did not sell well. Scott gained an international reputation with The Raj Quartet, which was adapted for the Granada television series The Jewel in the Grown (1982). Most of Scott’s works depict India or have Indian themes and characters. The Raj Quartet was completed in 1974. It includes four novels, told from different point of views. Through its characters and their worldview . Scott examines the moral and ethical decline of the last years of colonial rule. The Jewel In The Crown (1966) presents for the reader Daphne Manners, a young Englishwoman, her Anglo-Indian lover Hari Kumar, and the sadistic police official Ronald Merrick, who feels superiority over Kumar. In The Day Of The Scorpion (1968) Hari is imprisoned because of the rape and Merrick believes Hari to be guilty. The Towers Of Silence (1972) focuses on the Layton family, the engagement of Susan Layton and Teddie Bingham, their weddings, and the events before Teddie’s death. A Division Of The Spoils (1974) continues the story, but the central character is Guy Perron, who witnesses the independence of India and hears about Merrick’s death. Saying On (1977) returns to the world of the quartet, and depicts two of the minor characters, Tusker and Lucy Smalley, an elderly couple that live in isolated retirement in India long after independence.