F. R. Scott (Francis Reginald Scott) Biography

Canadian poet, born in Quebec, educated at Bishop's College, Lennoxville, Quebec, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. Scott followed a distinguished dual career as practising lawyer and as cosmopolitan and satiric poet; from the 1920s his energies were often devoted to promoting the cause of modern poetry and to satirizing what he saw as the tedious solemnity of much Canadian poetry of the period. Scott's experience of the Depression years in the 1930s changed his priorities, and his legal skills were increasingly devoted to fighting for an amelioration of the human condition; he co-edited Social Planning for Canada in 1935, and was National President of the League for Social Reconstruction for two years. In 1936 he edited with A. J. M. Smith the influential poetry anthology New Provinces, and they were later to co-operate again on the satirical anthology The Blasted Pine (1957). Scott's own poetry collections include Overture (1945), Selected Poems (1966), and Collected Poems (1980). Essays on the Constitution (1977) brought together essays and papers written between 1928 and 1971, and the Collected Stories of F. R. Scott appeared in 1981. Scott developed a keen interest in French Canadian writing; his highly acclaimed translation of Poems of French Canada appeared in 1977. A New Endeavour: Selected Political Essays, Letters and Addresses (1986) was edited by M. Horn.