Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a Scottish poet and novelist, closely associated with English Romanticism. His novels, such as Ivanhoe and Waverley, and his narrative poems, most famously The Lady of the Lake, became widely popular during his own lifetime and have remained so ever since thanks to his careful historical reconstruction of the eras in which his stories were set, and to his incorporation of folklore and literary traditions from the people of Scotland and England. Today, Scott is often considered one of the three "greats" in 18th- and 19th-century Scottish literature (the others being Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson).

Early Life[edit]

Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771 in the "Old Town" section of Edinburgh, Scotland, the last of nine children (six of whom died in infancy). His father (also Walter Scott) was a solicitor of some prominence in Edinburgh, while his mother, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of a physician and the sister of the scientist Daniel Rutherford, who identified the gas nitrogen in 1772. Both Scott's parents belonged to the gentry of the Scottish Borders region, claiming descent from chieftains of several Border clans.^[1]

In 1773, the young Walter contracted polio, which left him with a limp. In hopes of curing this, his parents sent him to live at the home of his paternal grandfather, Robert Scott, in the rural Scottish Borders, where he was taught to read and learned many of the folktales that he would later employ in his literary career. The stay in the countryside restored his powers of mobility somewhat, and after being returned to Edinburgh, he began his formal education at the city's Royal High School in 1779. He remained there until 1783, when he was sent back to the Borders countryside for his health and attended Kelso Grammar School for several months. Although his marks in these institutions were not especially high, he had already developed a passionate interest in history and literature, and frequently explored the city and the surrounding area.

Legal Career[edit]

With the intention of following in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, Scott began attending the University of Edinburgh in late 1783 and continued until 1786, resuming his studies in 1789. In between these two periods, he undertook an apprenticeship in his father's law office, and later studied under the Scottish jurist Alexander Fraser Tytler. Scott passed his bar examinations in 1792 and took up a legal practice in Edinburgh, joining the Faculty of Advocates, a Scottish legal association, the same year.

Though Scott's law practice was not especially prominent or lucrative, it allowed him enough of an income to maintain his occasional travels through Scotland and northern England (during which time he continued his collection of folklore, ballads, and other historical materials), and to play a respectable role in Edinburgh society. In 1797, in response to fears of a French invasion, he joined the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer Light Dragoons, and was named its quartermaster and secretary. Later that year, he married Charlotte Charpentier, the daughter of a refugee from the French Revolution, whom he had met on a trip to England's Lake District. The couple had five children, four of whom survived to adulthood.

In 1799, Scott was appointed as a Sheriff-Depute for the county of Selkirk, and a few years later was also made clerk of the Court of Session. The salary from the position of Sheriff-Depute (which generally did not require its holder to be at court full-time) gave Scott the freedom he needed to pursue a more intensive writing career.

Literary Career[edit]

Poet[edit]

Scott had begun entering the literary circles of Edinburgh society while still attending university, during which time he met a number of contemporary Scottish poets and was strongly influenced by James Macpherson's "Ossian" poems. He had his only meeting with Robert Burns in 1786 or 1787, at which time he impressed the older writer with his literary knowledge. During the years in which he was beginning his law practice, however, Scott did not become active in these circles in his own right. His first publication came in 1796 with his translation into English of several German poems; though these works were not his own creation, they were rooted in the folk traditions of their nation, which only encouraged Scott's own interests along those lines for his native Scotland.

Scott's first original poem, Glenfinlas, a supernatural tale based on an old legend of the Scottish Highlands, was written in 1798 and published in 1800, but his first really important work was his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of traditional ballads he had gathered during the previous decade that focused on the history and legends of the Borders region. It was published in two volumes in 1802, with additions the following year, and generally met with very positive reviews among British intellectuals.

Scott followed this success with The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, another supernaturally-themed poem set in the Borders. More completely his own work, as opposed to the representations in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, it too was very well-received, and from 1805 to 1812 at least Scott was arguably the most popular of contemporary British poets. He was also one of the most prolific, producing another collection, Ballads and Lyrical Pieces, in 1806; Marmion, a long narrative poem set in the early 16th century, in 1808; and The Lady of the Lake in 1810. Set in the 16th-century Highlands, it is often considered the greatest of Scott's poems, and its popularity (more than 25,000 copies were sold in the first year of publication) is credited with helping to inspire the revival of interest in Highland culture during the 19th century.

Novelist[edit]

From the start of his career, Scott had been interested in trying his hand at novels, which he thought might be more expressive than poetry in some ways, and by 1805 he had written several chapters of his future work Waverley. His poems were what he was best known for at this time, though, and his friends and publishers evidently encouraged him to stay with those for the time being. The success of The Lady of the Lake encouraged his belief that a historical novel might be successful (and in any case, his later poems were not considered as successful as those from the period 1802-10). He returned to the completion of Waverley, which was published in 1814; revolving around the adventures of the title character, an English officer in the Highlands during the Jacobite uprising of 1745-46, it was very popular with critics and general audiences, and spawned a series of related works known collectively as the "Waverley novels."

In all, Scott would write 27 novels, nearly all of them historical in nature and mostly set in Scotland, though several take place in England--including Ivanhoe (1820), arguably the best-known of his works today--and a few others in continental Europe. Many of these were written very quickly: Guy Mannering (1815) was produced in only six weeks. In general, those novels produced up to 1820 are considered superior by critics; these include Rob Roy in 1817, The Heart of Midlothian in 1818, and The Bride of Lammermoor in 1819. However, most of his novels, regardless of date, were financially successful at the time. Scott's ability to weave in historical detail and folk traditions made his stories eminently familiar and relatable to readers in both England and Scotland.

Mature Life[edit]

Influenced by his literary interests as well as his family background, Scott had from an early date desired to leave Edinburgh and live as a "lord of the manor" in the countryside. Beginning in 1812, he began purchasing land along the River Tweed in the Borders, and over the next several years built it up into a considerable estate, which he dubbed "Abbotsford" after the medieval St. Mary's Abbey in nearby Melrose. Scott lived here for most of the latter part of his life, festooning the residence with heraldic symbols and including a very large library.

In 1813, Scott was offered the title of Poet Laureate of Great Britain, but he declined it, fearing the dignity of the office would have an adverse effect on the quality of his work. Following his part in the locating of the Scottish Crown Jewels (which had been thought lost), Scott was granted the title of baronet in 1820, able to style himself as "Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet" from this point forward.

During the early 1820s, Scott had invested heavily in the Ballantyne publishing house, which collapsed during a financial panic in 1825, leaving him with debts of approximately £130,000. Though full repayment was not explicitly required by the law, and he could have easily gotten out of debt by asking his many friends and admirers for assistance, Scott was determined to pay back his creditors by his own efforts. During the last six years of his life, he produced a long string of new works, including six more novels, two short stories, two plays, and several nonfiction publications. Proceeds from these works would enable the entire debt to be paid off shortly after his death.

Scott's health began to fail in the late 1820s, and he suffered two strokes in 1830 and 1831. He was persuaded to take a cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, for which a ship of the Royal Navy was placed at his disposal. Scott received a hearty welcome at many places during the cruise, but he had another stroke near its end, and was transported back to his home at Abbotsford, where he died on 21 September 1832, at the age of 61. He was buried at nearby Dryburgh Abbey alongside his wife Charlotte, who had died in 1826.

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