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 also studied at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and at the Sorbonne.