Michael Scott
Michael Scott was a Scottish writer and merchant born in Cowlairs, Scotland, on October 30, 1789. Educated at the University of Glasgow, he moved to Jamaica in 1806 to work as an estate manager, eventually founding his own business in Kingston in 1810. His experiences in the West Indies greatly influenced his writing, which began to take shape in the early 1820s. Scott gained recognition for his first novel, "Tom Cringle's Log," published in serial form in Blackwood's Magazine from 1829 to 1833, which drew from his life in the Caribbean and was noted for its humorous storytelling. Although his second novel, "The Cruise of the Midge," also published in the same magazine, received a lukewarm reception, Scott's early work captured the interest of readers for its exotic settings. Despite his contributions, Scott's literary presence is often overshadowed in the broader literary landscape, and his works have not been extensively studied by scholars. He passed away in 1835, leaving behind a modest yet notable legacy in early 19th-century literature.
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Michael Scott
Scottish novelist
- Born: October 30, 1789
- Birthplace: Cowlairs, Scotland
- Died: November 7, 1835
- Place of death: Glasgow, Scotland
Biography
Son of a Glasgow merchant, Michael Scott was born at Cowlairs, Scotland, on October 30, 1789, and educated at the high school in Glasgow and at the University of Glasgow. He was sent to Jamaica in 1806 to work as an estate manager. In 1810 he founded his own business at Kingston. Many of the incidents recorded in his fiction occurred on trips that he took about the West Indies as a businessman. Scott returned to Scotland for a time in 1817. While there, he married Margaret Bogle of Glasgow; they had several children in later years. Scott returned to Jamaica, to remain from 1818 to 1822. Although he remained a merchant until his death, he apparently began to write seriously during the early 1820’s.
Tom Cringle’s Log began appearing as a series of sketches in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1829 and ran intermittently until its completion in 1833. As the installments appeared, the story became very popular, although the identity of its author was not known until some time after Scott’s death in 1835. The effectiveness and popularity of Tom Cringle’s Log once it appeared in book form undoubtedly stemmed from the exotic setting and the fact that Scott wrote humorously and at first hand of life in the West Indies. Scott’s second novel, The Cruise of the Midge, also appeared serially and anonymously. Like the first, it ran in Blackwood’s Magazine. Critics were not as lavish in their praise of the second book as they had been of the first, and readers found its humor forced. Scott never loomed large on the literary scene, and his work has gone relatively unnoticed by literary scholars.
Bibliography
Douglas, Sir George. The Blackwood Group. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897.
Shaw, William Arthur. “Michael Scott.” In The Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. Vol. 17. London: Oxford University Press, 1921.