Walter Scott
For other people named Walter Scott, see Walter Scott (disambiguation)Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (14 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time. In some ways Scott was the first author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers all over Great Britain, Ireland, Europe, Australia, and North America.
His novels and (to a lesser extent) his poetry are still read, but he is far less popular today than he was at the height of his fame. Nevertheless many of his works remain classics of English literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian''.
Born in
Edinburgh,
Scotland in
1771, the son of a Scottish
solicitor, the young Walter Scott survived a childhood bout of
polio that would leave him lame in his right leg for the rest of his life. To restore his health he was sent to live for some years in the rural
Scottish Borders region at his grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe. Here he learned the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends which characterized much of his work. Also, for his health, he spent a year in
Bath, England.
After studying law at the
University of Edinburgh, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyer's clerk he made his first visit to the
Scottish Highlands directing an eviction. He was admitted
advocate in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love suit with
Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, who married Sir
William Forbes.
At the age of 25 he began dabbling in writing, translating works from
German, his first publication being rhymed versions of ballads by
Bürger in
1796. He then published a three-volume set of collected Scottish ballads,
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This was the first sign of his interest in Scotland and history from a literary standpoint.
Scott then became an ardent volunteer in the
yeomanry and on one of his "raids" he met at
Gilsland Spa Margaret Charlotte Charpentier (or Charpenter), daughter of
Jean Charpentier of
Lyon in
France whom he married in
1797. They had five children. In
1799 he was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the county of
Selkirkshire, based in the town of
Selkirk.
In his earlier married days, Scott had a decent living from his earnings at the law, his salary as
Sheriff-Depute, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his father's rather meagre estate.
After Scott had founded a printing press, his poetry, beginning with
The Lay of the Last Minstrel in
1805, brought him fame. He published a number of other poems over the next ten years, including the popular
The Lady of the Lake, printed in
1810 and set in the
Trossachs. Portions of the German translation of this work were later set to music by
Franz Schubert. One of these songs,
Ellens dritter Gesang, is popularly labeled as "Schubert's
Ave Maria".
Another work from this time period,
Marmion, produced some of his most quoted (and most often mis-attributed) lines. Canto VI. Stanza 17 reads:
Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun,Must separate Constance from the nun:
Oh! what a tangled web we weave:
When first we practice to deceive!A Palmer too! No wonder whyI felt rebuked beneath his eye;In 1809 his
Tory sympathies led him to become a co-founder of the
Quarterly Review, a review journal to which he made several anonymous contributions.
When the press became embroiled in pecuniary difficulties, Scott set out, in
1814, to write a cash-cow. The result was
Waverley, a
novel which did not name its author. It was a tale of the "Forty-Five"
Jacobite rising in the
United Kingdom with its
English protagonist Edward Waverley, by his Tory upbringing sympathetic to
Jacobitism, becoming enmeshed in events but eventually choosing
Hanoverian respectability. The novel met with considerable success. There followed a succession of novels over the next five years, each with a Scottish historical setting. Mindful of his reputation as a poet, he maintained the anonymous habit he had begun with
Waverley, always publishing the novels under the name "Author of Waverley" or attributed as "Tales of..." with no author. Even when it was clear that there would be no harm in coming out into the open he maintained the façade, apparently out of a sense of fun. During this time the nickname "The Wizard of the North" was popularly applied to the mysterious best-selling writer. His identity as the author of the novels was widely rumoured, and in
1815 Scott was given the honour of dining with
George, Prince Regent, who wanted to meet "the author of Waverley".
In
1819 he broke away from writing about Scotland with
Ivanhoe, a historical romance set in 12th-century
England. It too was a runaway success and, as he did with his first novel, he unleashed a slew of books along the same lines. As his fame grew during this phase of his career, he was granted the title of
baronet, becoming Sir Walter Scott. At this time he organised the
visit of King George IV to Scotland, and when the King visited Edinburgh in
1822 the spectacular pageantry Scott had concocted to portray George as a rather tubby reincarnation of
Bonnie Prince Charlie made
tartans and
kilts fashionable and turned them into symbols of national identity.
Beginning in
1825 he went into dire financial straits again, as his company nearly collapsed. That he was the author of his novels became general knowledge at this time as well. Rather than declare
bankruptcy he placed his home,
Abbotsford House, and income into a trust belonging to his creditors, and proceeded to write his way out of debt. He kept up his prodigious output of fiction (as well as producing a non-fiction biography of
Napoleon Bonaparte) until
1831. By then his health was failing, and he died at Abbotsford in
1832. Though not in the clear by then, his novels continued to sell, and he made good his debts from beyond the grave. He was buried in
Dryburgh Abbey where nearby, fittingly, a large statue can be found of
William Wallace—one of Scotland's most romantic historical figures.
When Sir Walter Scott was a boy he sometimes travelled with his father from
Selkirk to
Melrose, in the
Border Country where some of his novels are set. At a certain spot the old gentleman would stop the carriage and take his son to a stone on the site of the battle of
Melrose (1526). Not far away was a little farm called Cartleyhole, and this he eventually purchased. In due course the farmhouse developed into a wonderful home that has been likened to a fairy palace. Through windows enriched with the insignia of heraldry the sun shone on suits of armour, trophies of the chase, fine furniture, and still finer pictures. Panelling of oak and cedar and carved ceilings relieved by coats of arms in their correct colour added to the beauty of the house. More land was purchased, until Scott owned nearly 1,000 acres (4 km²), and it is estimated that the building cost him over £25,000. A neighbouring Roman road with a ford used in olden days by the abbots of Melrose suggested the name of Abbotsford.
From being one of the most popular novelists of the 19th century, Scott suffered from a disastrous decline in popularity after the
First World War. The tone was set early on in
E.M. Forster's classic "Aspects of the Novel" (1927), where Scott was savaged as being a clumsy writer who wrote slapdash, badly plotted novels. Scott also suffered from the rising star of
Jane Austen. Considered merely an entertaining "woman's novelist" in the 19th century, in the 20th Austen began to be seen as perhaps the major English novelist of the first few decades of the 19th century. As Austen's star rose, Scott's sank, although, ironically, he had been one of the few male writers of his time to recognize Austen's genius. Scott's many flaws (ponderousness, prolixity, lack of humor) were fundamentally out of step with Modernist sensibilities. Nevertheless, Scott was responsible for two major trends that carry on to this day. First, he essentially invented the modern historical novel; an enormous number of imitators (and imitators of imitators) would appear in the 19th century. It is a measure of Scott's influence that
Edinburgh's central railway station, opened in
1854 for the
North British Railway, is called the
Waverley Station. Second, his Scottish novels followed on from
James Macpherson's
Ossian cycle in rehabilitating the public perception of
Highland culture after years in the shadows following southern distrust of hill bandits and the
Jacobite rebellions. As enthusiastic chairman of the
Celtic Society of Edinburgh he contributed to the reinvention of Scottish culture. It is worth noting, however, that Scott was a Lowland Scot, and that his re-creations of the Highlands were more than a little fanciful. His organisation of the
visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 was a pivotal event, leading Edinburgh tailors to invent many "clan
tartans" out of whole cloth, so to speak. After being essentially unstudied for many decades, a small revival of interest in Scott's work began in the
1970s and
1980s. Ironically,
postmodern tastes (which favoured discontinuous narratives, and the introduction of the 'first person' into works of fiction) were more favourable to Scott's work than Modernist tastes. Despite all the flaws, Scott is now seen as an important innovator, and a key figure in the development of Scottish and world literature.
Scott was also responsible, through a series of pseudonymous letters published in the
Edinburgh Weekly News in 1826, for retaining the right of Scottish banks to issue their own banknotes, which is reflected to this day by his continued appearance on the front of all notes issued by the
Bank of Scotland.
Many of his works were illustrated by his friend,
William Allan.
The Waverley Novels
Waverley (
1814)
Guy Mannering (1815)
The Antiquary (
1816)
Tales of my Landlord, 1st series, The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816)
Rob Roy (
1818)
Tales of my Landlord, 2nd series, The Heart of Midlothian (1818)
Ivanhoe (
1819)
Tales of my Landlord, 3rd series, The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose (1819)
Tales from Benedictine Sources, consisting of The Abbot and The Monastery (
1820)
Kenilworth (
1821)
The Pirate (
1822)
The Fortunes of Nigel (1822)
Peveril of the Peak (1822)
Quentin Durward (
1823)
St. Ronan's Well (
1824)
Redgauntlet (1824)
Tales of the Crusaders, consisting of The Betrothed and The Talisman (
1825)
*
Woodstock (
1826)
Chronicles of the Canongate, 2nd series, The Fair Maid of Perth (1828)
Anne of Geierstein (
1829)
Tales of my Landlord, 4th series, Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous (
1832)
Short stories
Chronicles of the Canongate, 1st series, The Highland Widow, The Two Drovers and The Surgeon's Daughter (
1827)
Poems
William and Helen, Two Ballads from the German (translator) (
1796)
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (
1802-
1803)
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (
1805)
Ballads and Lyrical Pieces (
1806)
Marmion (
1808)
The Lady of the Lake (
1810)
The Vision of Don Roderick (
1811)
The Bridal of Triermain (
1813)
Rokeby (1813)
The Field of Waterloo (
1815)
The Lord of the Isles (1815)
Harold the Dauntless (
1817)
*"Young Lochinvar"
Bonnie Dundee (
1830)
Other
*Introductory Essay to
The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland (
1814-
1817)
The Chase (translator) (
1796)
Goetz of Berlichingen (translator) (
1799)
Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk (1816)
Provincial Antiquities of Scotland (
1819-
1826)
Lives of the Novelists (1821-
1824)
Halidon Hall (1822)
The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1827)
Religious Discourses (
1828)
Tales of a Grandfather, 1st series (1828)
History of Scotland, 2 vols. (1829-
1830)
Tales of a Grandfather, 2nd series (1829)
The Doom of Devorgoil (1830)
Essays on Ballad Poetry (1830)
Tales of a Grandfather, 3rd series (1830)
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (
1831)
The Bishop of TyreBreathes there a man, with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land!from
The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Walter Scott
*
Sir Walter Scott,
John Buchan, Coward-McCann Inc., New York, 1932
*
Alexandre Dumas*
Karl May*
Baroness Orczy*
Rafael Sabatini*
Emilio Salgari*
Samuel Shellabarger*
Lawrence Schoonover*
Jules Verne*
Frank Yerby*
The Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club*
University of Pennsylvania e-texts of some of Walter Scott's works*
Free ebook of Walter Scott at
Project Gutenberg*
University of Edinburgh library's
Walter Scott Digital Archive*
Sir Walter Scott, a biography, by Richard H. Hutton, 1878, from
Project Gutenberg*
Dandie Dinmont Terriers named after a character in Guy Mannering
