William Pitt Scargill (1787–1836) was an English novelist and journalist active during the 1820s and 1830s. His work belongs to the early nineteenth-century tradition of socially observant fiction, often concentrating on class, money, ambition, professional life, and the unequal consequences of economic power. Scargill’s best-known novels include Rank and Talent (1831), The Usurer’s Daughter (1832), and My Aunt Ponty (1835). The Usurer’s Daughter, in particular, examines debt, speculation, and exploitation through a domestic and moral narrative. His novels combine melodramatic plotting with commentary on social institutions and the pressures faced by people seeking security or advancement. Although less widely remembered than many of his contemporaries, Scargill is of interest as a writer of early Victorian social fiction. He died in 1836, shortly after the publication of his later novels.
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