(The first historical novel and an international bestselle...)
The first historical novel and an international bestseller
Sir Walter Scott was one of the bestselling novelists of the nineteenth century and is credited with establishing the historical novel. His first novel, Waverley (1814), tells the story of Edward Waverley, a naïve young man who is posted to Scotland with his regiment. Edward must decide whether he will follow the civilization he has always known, or be drawn into an older world of honor. This edition is based on the authoritative Edinburgh version edited by Peter Garside.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
(One of the best books of all time, Sir Walter Scott's The...)
One of the best books of all time, Sir Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake. If you haven't read this classic already, then you're missing out - read The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott today!
("Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!"
Ba...)
"Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!"
Banished from England for seeking to marry against his father's wishes, Ivanhoe joins Richard the Lion Heart on a crusade in the Holy Land. On his return, his passionate desire is to be reunited with the beautiful but forbidden lady Rowena, but he soon finds himself playing a more dangerous game as he is drawn into a bitter power struggle between the noble King Richard and his evil and scheming brother John. The first of Scott's novels to address a purely English subject, Ivanhoe is set in a highly romanticized medieval world of tournaments and sieges, chivalry and adventure where dispossessed Saxons are pitted against their Norman overlords, and where the historical and fictional seamlessly merge.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
(Jeanie Deans, a dairymaid, decides she must walk to Londo...)
Jeanie Deans, a dairymaid, decides she must walk to London to gain an audience with the Queen. Her sister is to be executed for infanticide and, while refusing to lie to help her case, Jeanie is desperate for a reprieve. Set in the 1730s in a Scotland uneasily united with England, The Heart of Mid-Lothian dramatizes different kinds of justicethat meted out by the Edinburgh mob in the lynching of Captain Porteous, and that encountered by a terrified young girl suspected of killing her baby. Based on an anonymous letter Scot received in 1817, this is the seventh and finest of Scott's "Waverley" novels. It was an international bestseller and inspired succeeding novelists from Balzac to George Eliot.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
(Sir Walter Scott, (1771 1832) was a Scottish historical...)
Sir Walter Scott, (1771 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet. Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, The Antiquary and Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer.
(In the court of Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leice...)
In the court of Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is favoured above all the noblemen of England. It is rumoured that the Queen may chose him for her husband, but Leicester has secretly married the beautiful Amy Robsart. Fearing ruin if this were known, he keeps his lovely young wife a virtual prisoner in an old country house. Meanwhile Leicester's manservant Varney has sinister designs on Amy, and enlists an alchemist to help him further his evil ambitions. Brilliantly recreating the splendour and pageantry of Elizabethan England, with Shakespeare, Walter Ralegh and Elizabeth herself among its characters, Kenilworth (1821) is a compelling depiction of intrigue, power struggles and superstition in a bygone age.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Sir Walter Scott is the most acknowledged Scottish novelist and poetmaster of the historical novel who was popular throughout much of the world in the 19th century. He still remains one of the most influential authors of modern times. His work was widely read and imitated across the whole of Europe throughout the Nineteenth-Century in particular and his influence is marked even in such writers as Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and the Brontes.
Background
Ethnicity:
By birth Scott was connected with both the rising middle class of Britain and the aristocratic Scottish heritage then passing into history.
Walter Scott was born on August 15, 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland, a son of Walter Scott and Anne Rutherford. He survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame, a condition that was to have a significant effect on his life and writing. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower, the earlier family home.
He spent much time with his grandparents, but it was "Aunt Jenny" who took a special interest in him and influenced him to write. His visits to an uncle, Dr. Rutherford, professor of botany at the University of Edinburgh, brought him into contact with scholarly people.
Education
Taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work. Scott was educated at the high school at Edinburgh and also for a time at the grammar school at Kelso.
He was educated at Edinburgh University and prepared for a career in law, but his avocations were history and literature. Scott gained little from formal instruction at the high school and university, and he was largely self-taught. He read widely in English and Continental literatures, particularly medieval and Renaissance chivalric romances, German romantic poetry and fiction, and the narrative folk poems known as ballads.
Scott's first publications were translations from G. A. Bürger (The Chase and William and Helen, 1796) and Goethe (Goetz of Berlichingen, 1799).
A selection of Border ballads was published as Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802.
Scott's fame was soon established by the publicaton, in 1805, of his first long original poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, which appealed to the tastes of the time and was immediately a great success.
In this first long poem Scott revealed his strength - his gift for storytelling, his happy blending of fact and fiction, and his power to elicit interest through regionalism.
Scott's weakness lay in his inability to maintain a high strain of poetry in a long narrative poem, and, indeed, his fame as a poet rests more surely on the many short lyrics, such as "Rosabelle" and "Proud Maisie," which are scattered throughout his works.
The Lay was followed by Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), The Vision of Don Roderick (1811), Rokeby (1813), and his last major poem, The Lord of the Isles (1815).
During these years of the narrative poems Scott edited almost 70 volumes of miscellaneous works, including his editions of Dryden (18 vols., 1808), Somers' Tracts (13 vols. , 1809 - 1815), and Swift (19 vols. , 1814).
When taxed with doing so much editing he replied that this work interspersed with poetry acted like rotation of crops.
In 1809 he was one of the founders of The Quarterly Review, to which he thereafter frequently contributed; many of his most famous essays first appeared in that journal.
With the publication of Scott's first novel, Waverley, in July 1814, he entered a new phase in his life.
All his novels were published without his name, even after he had announced in 1827 that he was the sole author of them all.
The reason for this anonymity was probably that Scott, a genuinely modest man, was tired of being lionized as a great poet and had no desire to be lionized as a novelist.
Although the public openly credited him with the authorship, Scott, by maintaining silence, was freed from the unwelcome attentions of sycophants. Waverley owed its success partly to qualities which had ensured success for The Lay, namely, novelty in style and vivid description of manners.
In contrast to the long poems, Scott wrote his novels with incredible ease.
They were dashed off with scarcely a correction, and perhaps they owe much of their greatness to this spontaneous mode of composition, which may also account for their often careless construction. Scott was fortunate in the choice of subject for his first novel.
The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 was still a living tradition, and the horrors of civil war had not faded from men's minds; a novel which romanticised these events had a wide appeal.
Thus he was a novelist of manners, and his novels varied only in setting of time and place.
In no sense can they be called historical except insofar as real historical characters sometimes appear.
After these Scott went back with The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality to the 18th and 17th centuries, respectively.
By the time Scott had concluded the Waverley series he had covered eight centuries in time, and in space he had wandered as far north as Shetland (in The Pirate, 1821) and as far east as India (in The Surgeon's Daughter, 1827).
Rob Roy (1817), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818), A Legend of Montrose, and The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) completed the first series which, in his day, gave Scott the title of "Author of the Scotch Novels.
Fearing that he might exhaust the patience of his readers, Scott turned to England for his next novel, Ivanhoe, in 1819.
In 1820 he was created a baronet.
It was characteristic of Scott not to follow up his great success of Ivanhoe with another English novel.
The sequel was much superior to its predecessor, but neither are among Scott's masterpieces.
His next novel, Kenilworth, is one of his best, with its magnificent opening scene in an inn, its well-constructed plot, and the masterly portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Varney, Scott's greatest villain.
The Pirate, which appeared in 1821, was set in Scotland. Scott's publishers feared that he was writing too much and that he would "write himself down," but the reading public thought differently.
London welcomed wildly the appearance of The Fortunes of Nigel in 1822, and France gave a most enthusiastic reception to Quentin Durward, which was set in their own country in the time of Louis XI.
The total cost of his annual housekeeping expenses and his outlay on Abbotsford was well below the amount he earned from his professional salaries and the large sums, which he was led to believe he derived from his writings.
The fact is that Scott was the victim of the pernicious system of accommodation bills current at the time, and he seldom handled cash.
Under this financial system a man could remain solvent as long as the market was stable.
In 1825, however, there was a financial panic in London and creditors demanded the discounting of their bills.
The total was about £120, 000, only a small portion of which consisted of Scott's personal debts.
The drudgery of writing off the stupendous debt single-handledly shortened his life, but Scott steadfastly regarded it as his duty.
His publishers and friends (and Scott, too) feared that the magic wand would break, and he was encouraged to undertake fewer works of imagination.
He insisted, nevertheless, on writing novels as well and in these years produced several, but none of them reached his own former standard. For those who study Scott's life, these last six years of struggle against tremendous odds make sad reading.
However, repeated attacks of apoplexy left their toll on mind and body, and he was persuaded by his physicians and friends to seek renewed health in a warmer climate.
Had he been allowed to rest, his days might have been prolonged, but, as Sir William Gells' Reminiscences of Scott (1957) show, he was lionized wherever he went, and he suffered instead of gaining in health by the tour.
Scott's influence was universal and it was impossible for a writer not to be affected either directly or indirectly.
Scott's later years were clouded by illness, throughout which he continued to write. He spent the energies of his last years trying to write enough to recover honorably from the bankruptcy of a publishing firm in which he had invested heavily. He died at Abbotsford on September 21, 1832.
He was one of the most influential authors of modern times. Scott is often considered both the inventor and the greatest practitioner of the historical novel.
In Glasgow, Walter Scott's Monument dominates the centre of George Square, the main public square in the city. Designed by David Rhind in 1838, the monument features a large column topped by a statue of Scott. There is a statue of Scott in New York City's Central Park.
Numerous Masonic Lodges have been named after him and his novels. For example: Lodge Sir Walter Scott, No. 859 (Perth, Australia) and Lodge Waverley, No. 597 (Edinburgh, Scotland).
The annual Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was created in 2010 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Sir Walter Scott. At £25, 000, it is one of the largest prizes in British literature. The award has been presented at Scott's historic home, Abbotsford House.
A bust of Scott is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling. The annual Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was created in 2010 by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Sir Walter Scott.
Scott was raised a Presbyterian but later adhered to the Episcopal Church. His parents were very religious and imposed strict piety upon all their children. Walter was never very deeply affected religiously, however. His works, which contain much about the church, seek neither to elevate nor to censure it, but rather to depict it, for it was history and not philosophy that interested him most.
The Dutch writer Bos says he is a "character revolting to true Catholics."
Views
The influence of the Gothic school, with its tales of terror, can be traced in many of Scott's writings down to the end of his life, but, fortunately, he had a rival interest in the 1790's - his study of Border ballads - and this Scottish influence prevailed.
His point of view is of one watching an exciting drama and relaying what he sees with suitable explanation so that none of the excitement is lost.
He uses a disjointed flashback. He carries the action of one group to a certain point and then goes back to pick up another group to bring it into logical position. It is as though he were weaving together varied colored threads into one exquisite pattern. It is his task to put the threads together so that the finished piece of cloth is one carefully wrought, panoramic scene. Foremost are the figures, often in violent action, against a background of vivid natural beauty. To miss the description is to rob the piece of its wholeness and to be impatient with the archaic and distinctive words is to destroy the medieval setting.
He gives structural clues to move the story along, such as Rebecca's warning of robbers to Gurth, which prepares the reader for the swineherd's encounter with the thieves; Fang's howling precipitates the capture by De Bracy; the phrase which the Prior drops, "the witch of Endor," signifies Rebecca's trial.
Furthermore, he made history romantic, and to those who feel history to be dull, he makes it exciting. Many authors have written histories more accurate in detail and with more attention to chronology; some have written romances more tender and ethereal, but no one combines history and romance and makes them both more lovely and believable.
Scott was interested in superstition, which was in vogue in romantic literature, but only as a curiosity. Someone once said something to the effect that he saw too much daylight through the dark mysticism to be much affected by it. His use of superstition is certainly more romantic than with any intent to make it credulous.
Quotations:
“Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell. ”
“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education. ”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave. .. when first we practice to deceive. ”
“Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, and men below, and the saints above, for love is heaven, and heaven is love. ”
“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears. ”
“Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. ”
“Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening. ”
“Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never. ”
“Each age has deemed the new-born year. The fittest time for festal cheer. ”
“Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives! Fight on; death is better than defeat! Fight on brave knights! for bright eyes behold your deeds!”
“We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon.”
“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
“I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom, " he said to himself, "but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it. ”
“The misery of keeping a dog is his dying so soon. But, to be sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of me?”
“Chivalry! - why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection - the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant - Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword. ”
Membership
Scott was an active member of the Highland Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–32). He was also a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was also a member of the Royal Celtic Society.
Personality
Walter was afflicted at twenty-one months with something which a biographer describes as, "a paralytic affection, superinduced, or at least aggravated by scrofulous habit of body." It is, sufficient to say that it made him lame and doubtless pushed him into more academic pursuits.
Physical Characteristics:
He suffered from many physical ailments, one particularly serious one in adolescence, which made him, in his own words, "a glutton of books." Scott became seriously ill before Ivanhoe was finished and dictated much of it from his sickbed.
Quotes from others about the person
As Henry Beers says: "He possessed the true enchanter's wand, the historic imagination. With this in his hand he raised the dead past to life, made it once more conceivable, made it even actual."
His friend Mr. Morritt of Rokesbury said of him, "He was but half-satisfied with the most beautiful scenery when he could not connect it with some local legend."
Interests
Writers
Scott drew heavily on Shakespeare as well as Chaucer. In his boyhood and early manhood, Walter Scott read voraciously and knew Shakespeare and Spenser by heart. This colossal fund of knowledge, to which he added an acute observation of men and women of all ranks, equipped him for any type of composition he chose to undertake.
Connections
In 1797 Walter Scott married Charlotte Charpentier, daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France, and ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland, an Episcopalian. They had five children, of whom four survived by the time of Scott's death.
Father:
Walter Scott
Was a member of a cadet branch of the Scotts Clan.
Mother:
Anne Rutherford Scott
1733–1819
Wife:
Charlotte Charpentier
unknown–1826
Son:
Lt Walter Scott
Friend:
Adam Ferguson
While at the university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, the son of Professor Adam Ferguson who hosted literary salons.
Friend:
Thomas Blacklock
Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock who lent him books as well as introducing him to James Macpherson's Ossian cycle of poems.
