Walter Scott

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1771, the son of a lawyer. As a small child he survived polio, which left him lame, and he was sent to recover at his grandparents' farm in the Scottish Borders, where he heard many old songs, ballads and stories of Scottish history. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and became a lawyer. He first became famous as a poet with long narrative poems such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). In 1814 he published his first novel, Waverley, set during the Jacobite rising of 1745. It was a great success, and he followed it with many more historical novels, including Rob Roy (1817), Ivanhoe (1820), set in twelfth-century England, and Kenilworth. His novels were enormously popular across Europe and America. He built a large house, Abbotsford, near the River Tweed. In 1826 the collapse of his publisher left him deeply in debt, and he worked hard to repay it with his writing. He died at Abbotsford in 1832.

Walter Scott is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Raised in a Presbyterian household with a Presbyterian tutor. Source: Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) (via Wikisource)