A critical edition of "The Gravestones Wept" by Evelyn Scott, with commentary and textual notes

Evelyn Scott (1893-1963), born in Clarksville, Tennessee, was a novelist, poet. memoirist, playwright, and children’s writer. This dissertation is a critical edition of her third and final book of poetry “The Gravestones Wept.’’ Included, too, are a Commentary and Textual Notes. Unlike her two previous books of verse. Precipitations and The Winter Alone, “The Gravestones Wept’’ was not to see publication in her lifetime and was composed over three decades, from 1931 to 1960. This edition is based on the final text of “The Gravestones Wept,” which follows the 1960 typescript. The Textual Notes record the developments of her revisions through three earlier versions of this manuscript. Scott aggressively sought to publish “The Gravestones Wept” from 1948 until she died in 1963. “The Gravestones Wept,” then, offers a record of the mind of a once well-known artist as she struggled for purity of artistic expression while at the same time she was unable to find an audience for her work. Her isolation strongly informs the themes and the techniques of her poetry.