Although primarily remembered for his extensive literary works and his political engagement, Scott was an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, and throughout his career combined his writing and editing work with his daily occupation as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire.
A prominent member of the Tory establishment in Edinburgh, Scott was an active member of the Highland Society, served a long term as president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832) and was a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829).
Scott's knowledge of history, and his facility with literary technique, made him a seminal figure in the establishment of the historical novel genre, as well as an exemplar of European literary Romanticism.
He was created a baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland, in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom on 22 April 1820, which title became extinct on the death of his son the 2nd Baronet in 1847.
More information: Historic UK
Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771, in a third-floor flat on College Wynd in the Old Town, Edinburgh, a narrow alleyway leading from the Cowgate to the gates of the University of Edinburgh (Old College).
He survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame, a condition that would 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. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny Scott, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that later characterized much of his work.
Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of 12, a year or so younger than most of his fellow students. In March 1786, aged 14, he began an apprenticeship in his father's office to become a Writer to the Signet. At school and university, Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, whose father Professor Adam Ferguson hosted literary salons.
Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to the Ossian cycle of poems by James Macpherson.
More information: The Conversation
Scott was prompted to embark on his literary career by the enthusiasm in Edinburgh during the 1790s for modern German literature. Recalling that period in 1827, Scott said that he was German-mad.
In 1796, he produced English versions of two poems by Gottfried August Bürger, Der wilde Jäger and Lenore, publishing them as The Chase, and William and Helen.
On a trip to the English Lake District with old college friends, he met Charlotte Charpentier, a daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France, and a ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland, an Anglican. After three weeks of courtship, Scott proposed, and they were married on Christmas Eve 1797 in St Mary's Church.
Between 1805 and 1817 Scott produced five long narrative poems, each in six cantos, four shorter independently published poems, and many small metrical pieces. Until Lord Byron published the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812 and followed them up with his exotic oriental verse narratives, Scott was by far the most popular poet of the time.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), in medieval romance form, grew out of Scott's plan to include a long original poem of his own in the second edition of the Minstrelsy: it would be a sort of Romance of Border Chivalry & inchantment. Three years after The Lay Scott published Marmion (1808) telling a story of corrupt passions leading up to the disastrous climax of the Battle of Flodden in 1513.
The remaining two long narrative poems, Rokeby (1813), set in the Yorkshire estate of that name belonging to Scott's friend J. B. S. Morritt during the Civil War period, and The Lord of the Isles (1815), set in early fourteenth-century Scotland and culminating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Both works had generally favourable receptions and sold well, but without rivalling the enormous success of The Lady of the Lake.
Scott also produced four minor narrative or semi-narrative poems between 1811 and 1817: The Vision of Don Roderick (1811); The Bridal of Triermain (published anonymously in 1813); The Field of Waterloo (1815); and Harold the Dauntless (published anonymously in 1817).
The beginning of Scott's career as a novelist is attended with uncertainty. As the number of novels accumulated they were from time to time republished in small collections: Novels and Tales (1819: Waverley to A Tale of Montrose); Historical Romances (1822: Ivanhoe to Kenilworth); Novels and Romances (1824 [1823]: The Pirate to Quentin Durward); and two series of Tales and Romances (1827: St Ronan's Well to Woodstock; 1833: Chronicles of the Canongate to Castle Dangerous).
In the last years of his life, Scott marked up interleaved copies of these collected editions to produce a final version of what were now officially called the Waverley Novels: this is often referred to as the Magnum Opus or Magnum Edition.
In
1825, a UK-wide banking crisis resulted in the collapse of the
Ballantyne printing business, of which Scott was the only partner with a
financial interest; the company's debts of £130,000 (equivalent to
£10,700,000 in 2019) caused his very public ruin.
Download The Quentin Durward by Walter Scott
By then Scott's health was failing, and on 29 October 1831, in a vain search for improvement, he set off on a voyage to Malta and Naples on board HMS Barham, a frigate put at his disposal by the Admiralty. He was welcomed and celebrated wherever he went, but on his journey home he had a final stroke and was transported back to die at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832. He was 61.
Scott was buried in Dryburgh Abbey, where his wife had earlier been interred.
Scott was raised as a Presbyterian in the Church of Scotland. Scott's father was a Freemason, being a member of Lodge St David, No. 36 (Edinburgh), and Scott also became a Freemason in his father's Lodge in 1801, albeit only after the death of his father.
In 1925 Scott's manuscripts, letters and papers were donated to the National Library of Scotland by the Advocates Library of the Faculty of Advocates.
lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
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