Francis Harold Scarfe (1911–1986) was an English poet, critic and novelist, who became an academic, translator and Director of the British Institute in Paris.
He was born in South Shields; he was brought up from a young age at the Royal Merchant Seaman's Orphanage.
He was educated at Armstrong College in Newcastle, which was then part of Durham University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1933.
He taught at the University of Glasgow briefly before the outbreak of World War II, in which he worked in the British Army's Education Corps.
While in Orkney he lodged with the family of the young George Mackay Brown, on whom he was a major influence.