Sir Walter Scott

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Standard Name: Scott, Sir Walter
Birth Name: Walter Scott
Titled: Sir Walter Scott
Nickname: The Great Unknown
Used Form: author of Kenilworth
The remarkable career of Walter Scott began with a period as a Romantic poet (the leading Romantic poet in terms of popularity) before he went on to achieve even greater popularity as a novelist, particularly for his historical fiction and Scottish national tales. His well-earned fame in both these genres of fiction has tended to create the impression that he originated them, whereas in fact women novelists had preceded him in each.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Anna Gordon
Walter Scott included a selection of AG 's songs in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (of which the first two volumes appeared on this day).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Cultural formation Jean Rhys
JR 's maternal great-grandfather, John Potter Lockhart of Old Jewry, London, acquired the Genever Plantation in 1824. The plantation was at times prosperous, but problems occurred as a result of natural disasters and labour disruptions...
Cultural formation George Eliot
She was acquainted with a multiplicity of sects, since many flourished in Warwickshire. From this time she deliberately dressed unfashionably, became censorious of the behaviour of others, and began reading more deeply in religion. Fear...
Cultural formation Felicia Skene
FS was descended from Scottish aristocracy on her mother's side, with Jacobite connections; she was presumably white. Her parents belonged to the middle class. They travelled extensively and moved in distinguished circles; her father was...
Dedications Ann Taylor Gilbert
Young Josiah had the idea for this volume when he had been staying with the Taylors, and his father, Thomas Conder , was the book's publisher.
Armitage, Doris Mary. The Taylors of Ongar. W. Heffer and Sons, 1939.
207
The young authors dedicated it both to James Montgomery
Dedications Joanna Baillie
It was published with a dedication to Walter Scott . Produced as a melodrama at the Surrey Theatre in summer 1817, it had an excellent run of thirty-four nights.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Slagle, Judith BaileyEditor , Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
1: 168
Dedications Dorothea Primrose Campbell
In December 1813 DPC wrote to J. W. H. Payne , editor of The Ladies' Monthly Museum, to explain her dire financial circumstances and ask for his help in producing a second, London edition...
Education Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN devoured every book she could get...
Education Fanny Kemble
Fanny's reading here was important to her. She later regarded her close knowledge of the Bible as the greatest benefit I derived from my school training,
Kemble, Fanny. Records of a Girlhood. Henry Holt, 1879.
81
though she condemned the writings of Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Education Freya Stark
Family friends sympathetic to Freya's feelings of entrapment at Dronero sent her gifts of books: she was especially passionate about Shakespeare , Sir Walter Scott , Byron , Keats , Kipling , Shelley , Wordsworth
Education Catherine Carswell
In her unfinished autobiography, CC remembers that while she grew up there were no novels in the house except Sir Walter Scott 's, and a small, fat, small-printed volume, bound in ornamental red and black...
Education Sarah Tytler
From a young age Henrietta Keddie (later ST ) loved to read, and one of her earliest memories was being introduced by her father to the town's only bookseller as my little girl who is...
Education Jean Rhys
At a very young age, JR imagined that God was a book. She was so slow to read that her parents were concerned, but then suddenly found herself able to read even the longer words...
Education Emily Brontë
Thereafter, Patrick Brontë educated his remaining children at home, using standard educational texts including Thomas Salmon 's A New Geographical and Historical Grammar, a condensed version of Oliver Goldsmith 's History of England,...
Education George Eliot
Her devotion to John Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress remained unchanged during this period. She also read heavyweight works of theology, Hannah More 's letters, and a life of William Wilberforce . By late 1838, however...

Timeline

12 March to 25 May 1644
In her husband 's absence the royalist Countess of Derby , born a Huguenot Frenchwoman, successfully stood a siege at Lathom House in Lancashire (a towered and moated building).
February 1809
The Quarterly Review was founded.
1813
The Shetland poetMargaret Chalmers (born at Lerwick in 1858 and left in poverty with her sisters and aged mother after the death of their brother William at the battle of Trafalgar) published her Poems...
By January 1821
Ballantyne's Novelists Library began publication; it was completed in 1824.
14-29 August 1822
George IV visited Edinburgh (first reigning monarch to do so since the 1630s); Sir Walter Scott laid on a lavish display of Scottish national pride.
Mid 1820s
Harsh economic conditions caused two-thirds of established British publishing firms to crash: authors were ruined, like Sir Walter Scott , by the bankruptcy of Constable and Ballantyne in Edinburgh.
September 1826
The conservative Quarterly Review, discussing Sir Walter Scott 's Lives of the Novelists, omitted all mention of any female writer.
1827
Constable's Miscellany, a prolific series of affordable books, was established.
3 May 1834
William Harrison Ainsworth published his hugely successful first novel, Rookwood.
26 September 1835
Lucia di Lammermoor, probably the most famous opera by Gaetano Donizetti , had its first performance at Naples; its first appearance in London came three years later.
9 August 1838
The Hampstead circulating library, intended for the middling and lower ranks, which had stocked no novels on principle except those of Scott and Edgeworth , found these were borrowed so much more often than...
August-September 1846
William Makepeace Thackeray 's novelRebecca and Rowena, a sequel to Scott 's Ivanhoe, was serialised in Fraser's Magazine.
1882
Walter Scott Publishing CompanySir Walter Scott was established out of the bankrupt Tyne Publishing Company in Paternoster Square, London.
27 June 1894
Mudie's Circulating Library and bookseller W. H. Smith together announced they would not pay more than four shillings a volume for novels; this forced publishers to abandon triple-decker format, and quickly led to its replacement...
1904
Sir Walter Raleigh , author of the literary historyThe English Novel, 1894, moved from Glasgow to become the first Professor of English Literature at Oxford .