Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish writer and poet. He was born in Edinburgh on August 15, 1771. He was greatly influential in both Europe and the United States. He is credited with the creation and proliferation of the historical novel. At a young age, Scott read many books of all genres. He also read and recited poetry. He spent a lot of time in the countryside and developed an interest and love of Scottish nature and history. These explorations inspired his romantic and historical writings. As a young man, Scott began to study law, as his father had done. He also studied Italian, Spanish, French, German, and Latin. He married at the age of twenty-six, in December 1797. Scott began his literary career in the 1790s by studying German literature of the times. It was then that he began his lifelong work translating poems and manuscripts from a variety of European languages into English. He was interested in folk tunes and vernacular traditions, and he fused this with his romantic patriotism to compile and create Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of border ballads that were often edited by Scott into a romantic style. Scott’s works started to grow in popularity, and he built upon his success with longer narrative poems written in a similar style. The first of these was The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and his most famous was The Lady of the Lake (1810). James Sanderson, an English songwriter, set a section of The Lady of the Lake to music and created the personal anthem of the President of the United States, “Hail to the Chief” (1812). Scott published two multi-volume collections in the early nineteenth century, the works of Jon Dryden (1808), and the works of Jonathan Swift (1814). However, at this time, he was engaged in several ruinous financial situations, including owning a large share of a near-bankrupt publishing firm. He also owned a large country home which he filled with expensive eccentricities. By 1813, he refocused his literary efforts from narrative poetry to the historical novel. He no longer dominated the sphere of narrative poetry as “the greater depth and verve of Lord Byron’s narrative poems threatened to oust him from his position as supreme purveyor of this kind of literary entertainment” (Britannica). This shift proved to be revolutionary in the literary world. His first historical novel, titled Waverly, was immensely popular. Scott’s historical novels centered on the different classes of Scottish people, including countrymen, knights and aristocrats. He was a master of dialogue and description. Scott wrote nine historical Scottish novels. He later branched out and wrote historical novels set in England, and later in Palestine. Scott welcomed modernization but he was also troubled at the loss of Scottish independence. He reflected those sentiments in his writings. unfortunately, the fame of his historical novels brought about his financial downfall and eventually his death. Scott became entangled in disastrous financial schemes and spent the rest of his life attempting to pay off his debts which took its toll on his writing and his health. He died in 1832. Although he made ruinous financial decisions, “a life of Walter Scott requires no apology. He is by far the greatest figure in Scottish literature” (Wright 5). He invented and proliferated a literary form, wrote moving poetry, and represented his country in the global economy of literature.
Works Cited
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Sir Walter Scott". Encyclopedia Britannica, 17 Sep. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Scott. Accessed 20 February 2022Links to an external site..
Wright, Sydney Fowler. The Life of Sir Walter Scott. United Kingdom, Poetry League, 1932.