SCOTT. SIR WALTER. (b. Edinburgh, Scotland, Aug. 15 1771, d. Abbotsford, Scotland
Nov 21 1832 )
Walter Scott was born of middle-class parents at the time when the Romantic movement in Great Britain was beginning to flourish in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In the nineteenth century alone, eighty-two operas were based on his writings.
At the age of twenty-eight he was a moderately successful lawyer, married, and Sheriff of Selkirkshire, in the Scottish Border country from which his ancestors had come. Six years later he published The Lay Of The Last Minstrel, a narrative poem, and became an immediate literary giant. His romantic poem, The Lady of the Lake (1810) was so successful that he was able to build his gothic mansion, Abbotsford, from which he worked in partnership with the printing firm of James Ballantyne.
In 1814 he turned to prose and published Waverly, creating the genre of the historical novel, of which The Bride of Lammermoor is a typical example. This was subsequently adapted as a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano for Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor. Nineteen novels followed in the next twelve years and Scott was raised to the baronetcy and became a national figure.
In 1826, by a combination of his own poor business sense, the irresponsibility of the Ballantynes, and the national economic crisis, he was financially ruined. The rest of his life was spent doggedly writing to pay off his enormous debts.
The image of Scotland transmitted by Scott's prodigious output is both inaccurate and highly romantic. It nevertheless became firmly embedded in Scottish national tradition in his own lifetime, and has never been eradicated since.
