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Rolfe Arnold Scott-JamesOBE (birth registered as Rolfe Arnold S James, 21 December 1878 – 3 November 1959) was a British journalist, editor and literary critic. He is often cited as one of the first people to use the word "modernism" in his 1908 bookModernism and Romance, in which he writes, "there are characteristics of modern life in general which can only be summed up, as Mr.Thomas Hardy and others have summed them up, by the word, modernism" (p. ix).
Scott-James was educated under the surname James atBrasenose College,Oxford, and graduated in 1901. TheDictionary of National Biography states that Scott-James "possessed a strongly developed social conscience: this manifested itself at many different points in his career in activities which, if distinct from his literary gifts, at the same time enriched them" (872). His surname was recorded as James at the time of his marriage on 26 November 1905 to Violet Eleonor Brooks. His daughter, Violet Marie Livia born in July 1906 was registered with the surname Scott-James, as were subsequent children. In 1914, Scott-James, then a close friend ofWyndham Lewis, became the editor of theNew Weekly, which did not survive the outbreak of war later that year. During the war, Scott-James enlisted in theRoyal Garrison Artillery and fought inFrance, and by the end of the war he had risen to the rank of Captain and in 1918 was awarded theMilitary Cross.
In 1934, Scott-James took over the editorship of the influential magazine, theLondon Mercury fromJ. C. Squire, in which he published many canonically recognized authors of modernism. The last issue of theLondon Mercury in April 1939 containedW. H. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats."
In 1955 he was made anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire.[1]
His daughterAnne Scott-James also became a prominent journalist. The military historianMax Hastings is his grandson.
