Scott, Evelyn

Novelist and essayist Evelyn Scott was born Elsie Dunn in Clarksville on January 17, 1893, the only child of Seely and Maude Thomas Dunn. After living in Clarksville as a young child, she moved to New Orleans and enrolled in the Sophie Newcombe Preparatory School and later briefly at Sophie Newcombe College and Tulane University. Elsie Dunn rebelled early against the limitations of her class and times, writing at fifteen a controversial letter to the New Orleans Times Picayune advocating the legalization of prostitution as a way to control venereal disease. In 1913 she ran away to Brazil with