Tom Scott Papers

The Tom Scott Papers (Coll-1077) consists of ca. 170 letters to poet Tom Scott from other major twentieth-century Scottish writers.

Most relate to Scott's editorship (with John MacQueen) of The Oxford Book of Scottish Verse (1966) and are from writers selected for inclusion. Others concern controversies surrounding 1) Ian Hamilton Finlay and the Scottish school of concrete poetry and 2) the journal Scottish International Review, which was opposed by many Scottish writers for its perceived anti-Scots language stance. There are particularly significantly collections of letters from G. S. Fraser, W. S. Graham, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Alexander Scott.

The Tom Scott Papers are of particular interest for those researching Scottish literature in the 1960s, when the programme of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, as formulated by Hugh MacDiarmid in the interwar years, was increasingly challenged by a younger generation who felt part of an internationalist avant-garde.

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Tom Scott in Other EUL Collections

There is much material of Tom Scott interest in other Edinburgh University Library Collections, including manuscripts of poetry and prose by Scott in our Hamish Henderson, Maurice Lindsay, Norman MacCaig, and Hugh MacDiarmid collections, and letters from Scott to Helen Cruickshank, Hamish Henderson, Norman MacCaig, and, in particular, Hugh MacDiarmid.