Cirrus@Austlit

Writer, poet, novelist and humourist, Margaret Scott migrated to Australia with her first husband, Michael Boddy (q.v.), in 1959. She had been educated at Redland High School and Newnham College, Cambridge, and had taught in various English schools prior to her departure from the United Kingdom.

Scott completed a PhD thesis titled 'The Murderous Machiavel' at the University of Tasmania in 1978, and from 1966 to 1989 she taught in the English Department at that institution. She left teaching to become a full time writer. In 1986, after the death of her second husband, legal scholar Michael Scott, she bought and restored a house on the Tasman Peninsula in southern Tasmania. This inspired her poetry and her love for her home and surrounding area led to her being asked to write Port Arthur : A Story of Hope and Courage.

In the 1990s Scott became well known for her erudite appearances on the television shows World Series Debates and Good News Week. She was an associate editor of the Oxford Literary Guide to Australia (1987) and in 2000 published Convict Trail : Tasman Peninsula and Port Arthur, a history and travel guide. She served on the Island Management Committee for many years and was a generous financial sponsor of the magazine

In 2005 Scott was chosen for the inaugural Tasmanian Honour Roll of Women. She suffered from emphysema, and died at her home on the Tasman Peninsula.