Click on the thumbnail on the left to see a full-size image of a letter from Scott to the Irish writer Maria Edgeworth, dated 14 November 1827. It is in reply to a letter from Edgeworth thanking him for sending copies of Chronicles of the Canongate and Miscellaneous Prose Works. In response to Edgeworth's praise, Scott writes: "Now I claim credit as an honest man when I tell you that almost all things I have written even those which the public has received best have been so much inferior to that which I would like to have done that I am always disgusted with them for the time at least -- Years afterwards when the ideas out of which the story was produced have been entirely forgotten I have been much better pleased with them."

Click on the thumbnail on the right to see a full-size image of a letter from Scott to the scientist and philosopher Sir George Steuart Mackenzie (1780-1848), thanking him for sending his A letter to Sir Walter Scott ... : containing observations on the vitrified forts; and a review of what has been addressed to Sir Walter on these singular remains, by Dr. Macculloch, in his recent publication on the Highlands and Western Isles. In his response, Scott recalls excavations that he had personally conducted in spring 1796 when staying at Sir John Belsches Wishart's estate of Fettercairn (and courting Sir John's daughter Williamina).