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Hugh Stowell Scott (9 May 1862 – 19 November 1903) was an English novelist (under the pseudonym Henry Seton Merriman) Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, he became an underwriter at Lloyd\'s of London, but then devoted himself to travel and to writing novels, many of which had great popularity. Scott visited India as a tourist in 1877-78 and set his novel Flotsam (1896) there. He was an enthusiastic traveller, many of his journeys being undertaken with his friend and fellow author Stanley J. Weyman. Scott married Ethel Frances Hall (1865-1943) on 19 June 1889. The couple had no children. Scott was unusually modest and retiring in character. He died of appendicitis, aged 41, at Melton, Suffolk. Upon his death, Scott left £5000 to Evelyn Beatrice Hall, his sister-in-law and fellow writer, best known for her biographical work The Friends of Voltaire, writing that the legacy was "in token of my gratitude for her continued assistance and literary advice, without which I should never have been able to have made a living by my pen.