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

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.

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

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

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.