Papers of John A. Scott
MSS 136
Collection Title
Papers of John A. ScottCollection Identifier
MSS 136Inclusive date(s)
1968 to 1997Extent and Medium
Creator(s)
Category
Subject: Terms(s)
Subject: Person(s)
Collection Description
This collection comprises manuscript papers and related material produced or accumulated by John A. Scott.
Administrative / Biographical history
John Alan Scott was born on 23 April 1948 at Littlehampton, Sussex, England and arrived in Melbourne in 1959. He received a B.A. Dip Ed from Monash University in 1970 and a Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA) from the University of Technology, Sydney in 1991. During his career Scott was a lecturer in media studies at Swinburne Institute, Melbourne, 1974-1980 and Canberra College of Advanced Education (now the University of Canberra), 1981-1989. Since 1989 he has been a lecturer and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. He has also worked as a radio producer and freelance scriptwriter for radio and television.
John Scott is the author of many books of prose and poetry and his works have been nominated for, and received numerous awards. His poems have been widely published in Helix, Makar, Meanjin, Ear in a wheatfield, Overland, Quadrant, Scripsi and Southerly. Scott's works have been published internationally and appeared in French, Dutch, German, Italian and Chinese translations.
He was a member of the Four Australian Poets reading group that toured the USA and Canada in 1985 and has been a guest at Adelaide Writers' Week, the Melbourne Spoleto Festival and the Canberra Word Festival. In 1990, John Scott was awarded a poetry scholarship by the Australia Council to the Nancy Keesing Studio, Paris at the Cite Internationale des Artes. It was here that he completed the two prose poems 'Elegy' and 'The apology' and began work on his novella What have I written (1993). Although Scott's first novel Blair was published in 1988, he was still essentially writing as a poet and it was Mark Henshaw's (who was also working at the Paris Studio) enthusiasm for the novel as a form that influenced the direction of Scott's writing.
The film of his novella What have I written, for which Scott wrote the screenplay, was selected for the Competition Section of the 1996 Berlin Film Festival and won the 1996 International Mystery Film Festival in Bologna, Italy. The screenplay won a 1996 AWGIE award for best screenplay adaptation and was nominated for an AFI award for best screenplay adapted from another source.
Scott's awards include:
Poetry Society of Australia Award, 1970: winner
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, 2002: shortlisted for The architect : a tale
Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2002: shortlisted for The architect : a tale
Miles Franklin Literary Award, 1997: shortlisted for Before I wake
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, 1997: shortlisted for Before I wake
AWGIE Awards, Film Award, Adaptation, 1996: winner for What I have written
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, 1994: winner for What I have written
FAW ANA Literature Award, 1989: winner for Singles : shorter works 1981-1986
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, C.J. Dennis Award for Poetry, 1986: joint winner for St. Clair
Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry, 1985: joint winner for Preface (for Helen Williams of Ainslie If she wants it)
Mattara Poetry Prize, 1984: winner for St. Clair
NBC Banjo Awards, NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, 1977: shortlisted for Before I wake
Monash University Writing Award in 1966 and 1967.
Scott's poetry, novels, plays and other writings include:
The barbarous sideshow (1975)
The all-Australian show (radio script, 1977)
Now is the time, if ever there was a time, for the people of Australia to rise in anger and start to intervene in the affairs of governing this country (radio script, 1977)
Eleven, eleven (radio script, 1979)
77 km, North 63 East (radio script, 1979)
From the flooded city (1981)
A book of rats (1981)
Smoking (1983)
The quarrel with ourselves ; & confession (1984)
St Clair : three narratives (1986)
Blair (1986)
Elegies and other poems (by Emmanuel Hocquard; translated by John A. Scott, 1989)
Singles : shorter works 1981-1986 (1989)
Translation (1990)
Translations (translated into French by Christine Michel and Emmanuel Hocquard, 1992)
What I have written (1993)
Selected poems (1995)
Before I wake (1996)
Dante's political purgatory (1996) Architect : a tale (2001)
Warra Warra : a ghost story (2003)
References:
AustLit : The Resource for Australian Literature, February 2007.
Acquisition Details
Scope and Content
The collection comprises notebooks, notes, research material, translations, manuscript and typescript drafts of poetry, prose and screenplays, page proofs and audio cassettes.
System of arrangement
Special Collections staff has imposed the series arrangement of this collection to describe and preserve context and relationships.
Access Restrictions
Other
This collection is available for reference.Reproduction Restrictions
Existence and Location of Orginals
Related and Separated Materials
Further material relating to John A. Scott is located in the papers of:
John A. Scott, at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, NLA MS 8268, Papers of John A. Scott and NLA MS 7913, Papers of Margot Scott
Monash University (VMOU), MA-RA f A820.5 S427.1 A6/Z, John A. Scott.
Disclaimer
This collection contains a variety of copyright material. Copyright is held by the creator of each item. Specific conditions for this collection are listed above. If no conditions are stipulated then the standard terms of the Copyright Act apply for published and unpublished items. Digitised material from manuscript collections is provided to clients by UNSW Canberra in good faith for private study and research only, and may not be published or re-purposed without the express and written permission of the individual legal holder of that copyright. Refer also to the UNSW copyright, disclaimer and takedown policy.