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Pages on People Associated with Scott

For the moment, this page lists only links which specifically discuss Scott's relationship with the figure in question. It will eventually be expanded to include more general pages on Scott's friends, contemporaries, and literary models.

1. Friends and Associates
2. Sources and Literary Models
3. Figures Inspired by Scott
4. Models for Scott's Characters
5. Other

1. Friends and Associates

• Archibald Constable (1774-1827) - From the LoveToKnow Classic Encyclopedia site based on the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), this biographical page on the Scottish publisher focuses primarily on his dealings with Scott.
  
  
• Leyden Monument, Denholm - From the visitor information site Discover the Borders, a page on a monument to Scott's friend, the scholar and poet John Leyden, who was born in Denholm in 1775. The page refers to the assistance that Leyden gave Scott in gathering materials for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
  
  
• Pringles of Whitsome and Smailholm - An extract from William Anderson's The Scottish Nation (1860-63) reprinted by Tom Paterson's Scottish Roots, with paragraphs on Scott's friend and fellow Advocate, Alexander Pringle of Whytbank, who accompanied Scott to the field of Waterloo (see The Field of Waterloo and Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk) and on his father, also Alexander, whom Scott mentions in Marmion.
  
  
• Pringles of Whytbank and Yair - From Clan Pringle, the same extract as above from The Scottish Nation, with photographs of Whytbank Tower.
  
  
• Joseph Train by Charles Dickens - From Frances Coakley's A Manx Notebook, this page reprints an article from Household Words (1853) on the Gallowegian antiquarian Joseph Train, which particularly stresses his friendship with Scott and his possible provision of source material for Guy Mannering and for the narrative framework of Tales of My Landlord.

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2. Literary Sources and Inspirations

• The Burns Encylopedia: Scott, Sir Walter (1770-1832) - From Robert Burns Country, this entry quotes Scott's account of his encounter with Burns as a boy of fifteen in 1786 (as given in J.G. Lockhart's Life of Burns). It goes on to note Scott's praise of Burns in his correspondence and Journal.
  
  
• 'Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott: Two Versions of Scottish National Identity' - This essay by Ingo Kuehn (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), hosted by the World Burns Club, compares the attitudes of the two writers towards 'Britishness' and 'Scottishness', presenting Burns as the 'last Scot' and Scott as the 'first Brit'.
  
  
• True Thomas, Poet and Seer: The Story of Thomas the Rhymer - From Scots For Independence, a biographical sketch of Thomas the Rhymer or Thomas of Ercildoune, which mentions Scott's belief that he was the author of 'Sir Tristrem' (which Scott edited in 1804; see Scott the Poet) and includes the text of 'Thomas the Rhymer' which Scott included in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

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3. Figures Inspired by Scott

• Literary allusions in Jane Austen's Writings - From The Republic of Pemberley, an index to literary allusions and quotations in the fiction and correspondence of Jane Austen which includes an entry for Scott.
  
  
• 'Honoré de Balzac and the "Genius" of Walter Scott: Debt and Denial' - An article by Edward C. Smith III in Comparative Literature Studies, 36.3 (1999), arguing that what Balzac primarily admired in Scott was his 'innovative ability to collect and organize the random details of reality within a comprehensive vision which was able to provide both conceptual stability and narrative coherence'.
  
  
• Berlioz Photo Album 8a: Writers and Poets - Part of Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb's The Hector Berlioz Website, this page lists Scott amongst the writers and poets who inspired Berlioz and includes links to pages on Berlioz's overtures Waverley (1827) and Rob Roy Macgregor (1831).
  
  
• Cooper as the American Scott - From James Fenimore Cooper: A Literary Pioneer, a site edited by Sarah Evans, Abby Fifer, and Jenn Reynolds, students at the University of Virginia, this page gives a summary of George Dekker's comparison of the two writers in James Fenimore Cooper, the American Scott (1967). 
  
  
• James Fenimore Cooper versus Sir Walter Scott - From the writing community site Everything2.com, a comparison by 'Roninspoon' of the themes of James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott, subtitled 'The Fight of the Nineteenth Century!'.
  
  
• 'History, Language, and the Leatherstocking Tales' - From the James Fenimore Cooper Society site, this essay by William P. Kelly (Queens College, CUNY) was originally published in James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art, no. 2 (1979). It charts Cooper's transformation of a historiographic model inherited from Scott and from the Scottish Common Sense School.
  
  
• 'Revolution and the Historical Novel: Cooper's Transforming of European Tradition' - From the James Fenimore Cooper Society site, this essay by John McWilliams (Middlebury College) was originally published in James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art, no. 8 (1991). It argues that Cooper's novels The Spy (1821) and Lionel Lincoln (1825) reject the wavering European hero of Scott, Balzac, and Pushkin but accept the notion of innate character.
  
  
• 'Truth and Consequences: James Fenimore Cooper on Scott, Columbus, Bumppo, and Professional Authorship' - From the James Fenimore Cooper Society site, this essay by Stephen P. Harthorn (University of Tennessee) was originally published in James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers, 20 (2004), pp. 1-10. Click here for a brief précis.
  
  
• Frederick Douglass, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns - Alasdair Pettinger's site Frederick Douglass in Scotland describes the visit made by the black anti-slavery activist in 1846. This page describes Douglass's love of Scott and Burns. It was a reading of The Lady of the Lake that inspired him to adopt the name of the 'black Douglas(s)'.
  
  
• Under the Same Sky - From Io, Renzo e Lucia, a web project by the pupils of the XVIII Agosto 1860 School of Potenza, Italy, devoted to Alessandro Manzoni's novel I Promessi Sposi (1821-42), these pages discuss the influence of Scott on Manzoni, tendentiously contrasting the picturesque superficiality of the former with the moral and psychological commitment of Manzoni.
  
  
• On "Seferis on Eigg"' - From 18 Essays on Sonnets from Edwin Morgan's Sonnets from Scotland at EdwinMorgan.com, this essay by Sebastiaan Verweij discusses (and partially quotes) Scott's account of his visit to Eigg in 1814 as a source for Morgan's sonnet 'Seferis on Eigg' (originally published in Morgan's 1984 collection Sonnets from Scotland).

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4. Models for Scott's Characters

The Antiquary | Ivanhoe | 'Lochinvar' | The Pirate | Peveril of the Peak | Rob Roy

The Antiquary

• Edie Ochiltree's Grave, Roxburgh - From the visitor information site Discover the Borders, a page on the carved gravestone of Andrew Gemmels, the 'gaberlunzie man', who died at the age of 106, and upon whom Scott is though to have based the character Edie Ochiltree in The Antiquary. Together with a photograph of the gravestone, the page gives directions and information on visiting hours.

Ivanhoe

• Rebecca Gratz - From Jewish Women's Archive, this page considers the claim of Jewish-American philanthropist Rebecca Gratz to be considered the model for Rebecca in Scott's Ivanhoe. Scott is purported to have learned of Gratz via their mutual friend Washington Irving.

'Lochinvar'

• Lochinvar, Our White Knight? - From the genealogical Land Family site, this text traces a family connection with James Montgomery who has been proposed as a model for Scott's 'young Lochinvar'. There is a link to a text of the ballad 'Lochinvar' (sung by Lady Heron in Marmion).

Peveril of the Peak

• Illiam Dhône and the Manx Rebellion, 1651 - From A Manx Note Book, this is an e-text of a volume printed by the Manx Society in 1877 which gathered authentic archive material on the rebellion against the Earl of Derby, Lord of the Island, an episode depicted in Scott's Peveril of the Peak. The preface by editor William Harrison discusses Scott's treatment of the rising and its leader Illiam Dhône (or William Christian).

The Pirate

• John Gow - From the Fea Family Website, a biographical page on John Gow, 'the Orkney Pirate' which notes Scott's departures from the historical account when recasting Gow as Captain Cleveland in The Pirate. James Fea, an ancestor of the site editors, was instrumental in Gow's capture.
  
  
• John Gow, the Orkney Pirate - From the heritage site Orkneyjar, a biographical page on the pirate John Gow (ca 1698-1725) who is thought to be the model of Captain Cleveland in Scott's The Pirate.
  
  
• Bessie Millie - From the genealogical site Ancestral Orkney, a paragraph on the Stromness 'witch' Bessie Millie who was reputed to sell favourable winds to sailors. She is said to have been visited by Scott during his 1814 visit to Orkney and to have inspired the character of Norma of the Fitful Head in The Pirate. She is also thought to have provided Scott with an account of the life of John Gow whom she claimed to have known.

Rob Roy

• Rob Roy MacGregor (or McGregor) - From the tourist information site InCallander, a biographical page on Rob Roy MacGregor, including a lengthy extract from Picturesque Scotland (1883) by Francis Watt and Andrew Carter.

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5. Other

• Significant Scots: Thomas Graham - From Electric Scotland, an entry from the Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1856) on Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch, the Scottish general who commanded the British contingent at the Battle of Barossa (1811). Scott's lines of tribute in The Vision of Don Roderick are quoted. The same resource provides a further page on Thomas Graham from James Taylor's The Great Historic Families of Scotland (1887).

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Last updated: 01-Sept-2009
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