Critical and Biographical Monographs on Sir Walter Scott, 2000- : An Annotated Bibliography

Critical and Biographical Monographs on Sir Walter Scott, 2000-

An Annotated Bibliography

The following is an annotated bibliography of recent books wholly or substantially devoted to Sir Walter Scott. The bibliography draws primarily on ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language & Literature), Bibliography of Scotland, OCLC WorldCat, the General Catalogues of The British Library and National Library of Scotland, and other national library catalogues and union databases accessible via The European Library portal. Additional material was traced via published reviews and citations. The editor would always be glad to receive notification of new publications or to be alerted to any omissions or errors.

Alexander, J. H. Walter Scott's Books: Reading the Waverley Novels (London; New York: Routledge, 2017) 234 p. ISBN: 9780415789684

Scott's Books aims to provide an approachable introduction to the Waverley Novels. Drawing on substantial research in Scott's intertextual sources, it offers a fresh approach to the existing readings where the thematic and theoretical are the norm. Avoiding jargon, and moving briskly, it tackles the vexed question of Scott's 'circumbendibus' style head on, suggesting that it is actually one of the most exciting aspects of his fiction: indeed, what Ian Duncan has called the 'elaborately literary narrative', at first sight a barrier, is in a sense what the novels are primarily 'about'. The book aims to show how inventive, witty, and entertaining Scott's richly allusive style is; how he keeps his varied readership on board with his own inexhaustible variety; and how he allows proponents of a wide range of positions to have their say, using a detached, ironic, but never cynical narrative voice to undermine the more rigid and inhumane rhetoric.

Bautz, Annika. The Reception of Jane Austen and Walter Scott: A Comparative Longitudinal Study (London; New York: Continuum, 2007) x, 198 p. ISBN: 9780826495464

Alone among novelists of the Romantic period, Austen and Scott, have been continuously reprinted, read, and discussed from first publication until the present day. In this study, Bautz traces how Scott’s nineteenth-century success among all classes of readers made him the most admired and widely read novelist in history, only for his standing to plummet sharply in the twentieth century. Austen’s popularity, by contrast, has risen inexorably, overtaking Scott’s, and bringing about a reversal in reputation that would have been unthinkable in the authors’ own time. To assess the reactions of readers belonging to diverse interpretative communities, Bautz draws on a wide range of indicators, including editions, publisher’s relaunches, sales, reviews, library catalogues and lending figures, private comments in diaries and letters, and popularisations. She charts the reception of each author over two centuries, explaining literary tastes and their determinants, and illuminating the broader culture of successive audiences.

Brown, Iain G. (ed.) Abbotsford and Sir Walter Scott: The Image and the Influence (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2003) xvii, 173 p. ISBN: 0903903261

This collection of essays studies the role of Abbotsford in the history of Scottish antiquarianism, and its significance for understanding both Scott himself and his later influence. It examines the image of Scott that he projected at and through his house, and looks at the impact of its design, ambiance, and decoration not only in Britain but as far away as Russia. A particular feature is the detailed examination of Scott's collections, which are placed within the context of the Scottish antiquarian tradition which Scott did so much to establish and consolidate. Individual contributions are listed under Articles and Chapters on Sir Walter Scott Published in 2003. See I. G. Brown 2003b, Cannizzo 2003, Cheape, Cowie, and Wallace 2003, Frew 2003, Howard 2003, D. Jones 2003, Lawson 2003, and Lloyd 2003.

Brown, Ian (ed.) Literary Tourism, the Trossachs and Walter Scott (Glasgow: Scottish Literature International, 2012) 176 p. ISBN-10: 190898000, ISBN-13: 978-1908980007

In 1810 a literary phenomenon swept through Britain, Europe and beyond: the publication of Sir Walter Scott's epic poem The Lady of the Lake, set in the wild romantic landscape around Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. The world's first international blockbusting bestseller, in terms of sheer publishing sensation nothing like it was seen until the Harry Potter books. Exploring the potent appeal that links books, places, authors and readers, this collection of eleven essays examines tourism in the Trossachs both before and after 1810, and surveys the indigenous Gaelic culture of the area. It also considers how Sir Walter's writings responded to the landscape, history and literature of the region, and traces his impact on the tourists, authors and artists who thronged in his wake. Individual contributions are listed under Articles and Chapters on Sir Walter Scott Published in 2012. See Alison 2012, I. Brown 2012, Durie 2012, Furniss 2012, D. Hewitt 2012, MacDonald 2012, D. McMillan 2012, Manderson 2012, M. Newton 2012, Thompson 2012, and N. J. Watson 2012. The essays were developed from papers delivered at 'Scott, the Trossachs, and the Tourists', the Annual Conference of the Association for Scottish Literary Studies at Balloch, Scotland, 5-6 June 2010.

Bruzelius, Margaret. Romancing the Novel: Adventure from Scott to Sebald (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2007) 285 p. ISBN: 0838756441

Examines the ways in which romance forms characteristic of "boys' books" -- as exemplified in the novels of Scott, Dumas, Verne, and Stevenson -- influence narratives not generally put in the same category: both psychoanalytical accounts of the psyche and novels by authors as diverse as George Eliot, Ursula Le Guin, Joseph Conrad, and W. G. Sebald. Analyses how adventure privileges masculinity but also reveals an extraordinary ambivalence towards it, since the truly seductive masculine figures in such fictions are always finally exiled from the centre of the social consensus. Five chapters, in particular, deal extensively with Scott's work (especially Waverley, Guy Mannering, and Old Mortality): 'Adventure and the Novel', '"The Importance of Elsewhere": Exotic Landscapes, Generative Spaces', 'A Curious Blankness: The Inept Hero', 'Rogue Males and Demons', and 'Women: Wild and Otherwise'.

Chen, Ingrid Szu-Ying. Reading W. Scott's Picturesque Scotland: The Picturesque and the Representation of Scotland in Walter Scott's 'Waverley' (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012) 124 p. ISBN-10: 3846527475, ISBN-13: 978-3846527474

This monograph examines the aesthetics of the picturesque as practised by Scott in Waverley (1814) and shows how Scott's representation of Scotland reveals the paradoxical nature of the politics of his times. Scott creatives a representative image of a nation, but one in which national identity wavers continuously between romance and history, imagination and reality.

Cosh, Mary. Edinburgh: The Golden Age (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2003) x, 1005 p. ISBN: 0859765717

Although not specifically devoted to Scott, this monograph deals more extensively with Scott's life and work than could be adequately recorded under Articles and Chapters. Four chapters, in particular, chart Scott's literary career in the capital. 'A New Kind of Novel' (pp. 335-46) describes the reception by the Edinburgh literati of the early Waverley Novels -- from Waverley itself (1814) to The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) -- and the debate surrounding the anonymous novelist's true identity. 'Scott Lionised' (pp. 347-63) depicts the writer at the height of his fame with particular emphasis on contemporary accounts of Scott in society. 'A Crisis' (pp. 701-09) covers the financial crisis of 1825-26, the writing of The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, and Scott's confession to being the 'Author of Waverley'. 'The Last Years of Scott' (pp. 893-903) records his final years of illness, his travels in the hope of recovering his health, his death and funeral.

D'Arcy, Julian Meldon. Subversive Scott: The Waverley Novels and Scottish Nationalism (Reykjavík: Stofnun Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur í erlendum tungumálum: Háskólaútgáfan, 2005) 294 p. ISBN: 9979546662

This volume challenges the conventional view that Scott presents Scotland's future as belonging within the peace, prosperity, and progress of the United Kingdom and British Empire. Embedded within his Waverley Novels, D'Arcy argues, are dissonant discourses and discreet subtexts which inspire far more subversive readings than hitherto perceived. Despite Scott's apparently politically correct fiction and lifestyle, his fiction contains undetected and underrated manifestations of Scottish nationalism which not only invoke sharp criticism of both the Union and English imperial policy, but also reveal his passionate concern with the issues of Scotland's national identity, dignity, and independence.

Dailey, Jeff S. Sir Arthur Sullivan's Grand Opera 'Ivanhoe' and its Musical Precursors: Adaptations of Sir Walter Scott's Novel for the Stage, 1819-1891 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008) 256 p. ISBN: 077345068-8

This study chronicles the creation, performance history, and critical reception of Arthur Sullivan’s Ivanhoe (1890), a grand opera based on Scott’s novel of the same name. It also includes a comprehensive survey of previous theatrical and musical adaptations of Scott’s Ivanhoe.

Dawson, Terence. The Effective Protagonist in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel: Scott, Brontë, Eliot, Wilde (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) vi, 300 p. ISBN: 075464135X

Dawson challenges current views about the correlation between narrative structure, gender, and the governing psychological dilemma in four nineteenth-century British novels. The overarching argument is that the opening situation in a novel represents an implicit challenge facing not the obvious hero/heroine but an individual defined as the 'effective protagonist'. To illustrate his claim, Dawson pairs two sets of novels with unexpectedly comparable dilemmas: Ivanhoe with The Picture of Dorian Gray and Wuthering Heights with Silas Marner. In all four novels, the effective protagonist (in Ivanhoe's case, Cedric of Rotherwood) is an apparently minor figure whose crucial function in the ordering of the events has been overlooked. Rereading these well-known texts in relation to hitherto neglected characters uncovers startling new issues at their heart and demonstrates innovative ways of exploring both narrative and literary tradition.

Dekker, George. The Fictions of Romantic Tourism: Radcliffe, Scott, and Mary Shelley (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004) 328 p. ISBN: 0804750084

Ann Radcliffe, Scott, and Mary Shelley were keen tourists and influential contributors to the discourse of Romantic tourism. This study examine how the shaping power of this discourse affected not only what they saw and felt on tour but also how they imagined their greatest novels. Defining both tour and novel as privileged spaces exempt from the routines of ordinary life, these authors effectively brought the tour into fiction and fiction into the tour. Dekker pays particularly close attention to the active commerce between British Romantic fiction, poetry, tour books, landscape painting, and book illustration (as exemplified by the collaboration between Scott and J. M. W. Turner).

Duncan, Ian. Scott's Shadow: The Novel in Romantic Edinburgh (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, c2007) xix, 387 p. ISBN: 9780691043838

This is the first comprehensive account of the flowering of Scottish fiction between 1802 and 1832, when Edinburgh rivaled London as a centre for literary and cultural innovation. It situates Scott as the central figure and shows how he helped redefine the novel as the principal modern genre for the representation of national historical life. Duncan traces the rise of a cultural nationalist ideology and the ascendancy of Scott's Waverley novels in the years after Waterloo. He argues that the key to Scott's achievement and influence was the actualization of a realist aesthetic of fiction that offered a socializing model of the imagination as first theorized by Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume. This aesthetic provides a powerful novelistic alternative to the Kantian-Coleridgean account of the imagination that has long been taken as normative for British Romanticism. Duncan goes on to examine how other Scottish writers inspired by Scott's innovations - James Hogg and John Galt in particular - produced in their own novels and tales rival accounts of regional, national, and imperial history.

Eden, David (ed.) Sullivan's 'Ivanhoe' (Saffron Walden: Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, 2007) 140 p. ISBN: 9780955715402

This collection of essays on Sir Arthur Sullivan's operatic adaptation of Ivanhoe (1890) includes contributions on its creation and critical reception, its performance and recording history, and its relationship to continental opera and to earlier operatic and theatrical adaptations of Scott's novel.

Elliot, Walter. Sir Walter Scott Trail ([Selkirk: Scottish Borders Tourist Board], 2000) 9 p. Trails of the Borders.

An illustrated motor route through the Scott Country. Covering 70 miles from Kelso to Dryburgh Abbey, it largely follows the itinerary of Scott's own life. Includes a brief biographical sketch.

Faktorovich, Anna. Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013) 275 p. ISBN-10: 0786471492, ISBN-13: 978-0786471492

This is a study of the previously overlooked rebellion novel genre, with a close look at the works of Scott (Waverley and Rob Roy), Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities and Barnaby Rudge), and Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped and The Young Chevalier). The linguistic and structural formulas that these novels share are presented, along with a comparative study of how these authors individualized the genre to adjust it to their needs. Scott, Dickens and Stevenson were led to the rebellion genre by direct radical interests. They used the tools of political literary propaganda to assist the poor, disenfranchised and peripheral people, with whom they identified and hoped to see free from oppression and poverty.

Felluga, Dino Franco. The Perversity of Poetry: Romantic Ideology and the Popular Male Poet of Genius (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004) 256 p. ISBN: 0791462994

No study has explored the reason why such contending claims were made for poetry in the nineteenth century: that it was a panacea for the ills of the age or a pandemic at the heart of the social order. The former position was originally associated particularly with Scott's poetry; the latter with Byron's, while Tennyson assumed a position between the two. In exploring the logic behind these attributions, Felluga brings to light a host of previously unexplored medical and historical material while arguing that the medical rhetoric associated with all three authors served to undercut the surprising influence of these poets on the emergent mass market, on political ceremony, and on revolutionary radicalism.

García González, José Enrique. Traducción y recepción de Walter Scott en España: estudio descriptivo de las traducciones de 'Waverley' al español (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2005) ISBN: 846901787X

The first part of this study charts Spanish translations of Scott and examines their critical and academic reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also discusses Scott's treatment at the hands of the Spanish censor. The second part presents a comparative analysis of six translations of Waverley published between 1833 and 1958.

Geppert, Hans Vilmar. Der Historische Roman: Geschichte umerzählt - von Walter Scott bis zur Gegenwart (Tübingen: A. Francke Verlag, 2009) 434 p. ISBN: 3772083250

On what conditions can we speak of the 'historical novel'? And what makes this hybrid of fact and fiction so vital? Can different literatures reciprocally interpret each other in a fruitful way? How modern was the 19th century? How traditional and realist are the Moderns and Postmoderns? What connections are there between difficulty and entertainment, between bestsellers and 'great' literature. At the centre of this transnationally focussed history of the form are case studies of numerous novels from German, Anglo-American, and French literature, cutting across literary fields and traditions, and sketching a paradoxical poetics.

Gottlieb, Evan. Walter Scott and Contemporary Theory (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) 208 p. ISBN: 9781441182531

Scott was not only a writer of thrilling tales of romance and adventure but also an insightful historical thinker and literary craftsman. This study builds on this renewed appreciation of Scott's importance by viewing his most significant novels -- from Waverley and Rob Roy to Ivanhoe, Redgauntlet, and beyond -- through the lens of contemporary critical theory. By juxtaposing pairings of Scott's early and later novels with major contemporary theoretical concepts and the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Žižek, this book uses theory to illuminate the complexities of Scott's fictions, while simultaneously using Scott's fictions to explain and explore the state of contemporary theory.

Gottlieb, Evan, and Ian Duncan (eds) Approaches to Teaching Scott’s Waverley Novels
(New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2009) vi, 202 p. ISBN: 9781603290364 (pbk), 9781603290357 (hbk)

Scott's Waverley novels are increasingly popular in the classroom, fitting into courses that explore topics from Victorianism and nationalism to the rise of the publishing industry and the cult of the author. They present, however, unusual challenges to instructors. Students need guidance, for instance, in navigating Scott's use of vernacular Scots and antique styles, sorting through his historical and geographical references, and distinguishing his multiple authorial personas. The essays in this volume are designed to help teachers negotiate these and other intriguing features of the Waverley novels. Part 1, 'Materials', guides instructors in selecting appropriate editions of the Waverley novels for classroom use. It also categorizes and lists background and critical studies of Scott's novels and recommends additional readings for students, as well as multimedia instructional resources. Part 2, 'Approaches', examines the novels' relation to Scottish history, Scott's use of language, and concepts of Romantic authorship; considers gender, legal, queer, and multicultural approaches; recommends strategies for teaching Scott alongside other authors such as Jane Austen; and offers detailed ideas for introducing individual novels to students -- from imagining Ivanhoe in the context of nineteenth-century medievalism to reconsidering how the ethical issues raised in Old Mortality reflect on religion and violence today. Individual contributions are listed under Articles and Chapters on Sir Walter Scott Published in 2009. See Baker 2009b, Buckton 2009, Carson 2009, Edwards 2009, Hasler 2009, D. Hewitt 2009, Hoeveler 2009, Langan 2009, Mack and Gilbert 2009, McCracken-Flesher 2009, McNeil 2009, Simmons 2009, Sorensen 2009, Tulloch 2009, and T. G. Wallace 2009.

Graves, Peter. Fröding, Burns and Scott (Edinburgh: Lockharton Press, 2000) 139 p. ISBN: 1874665117

The second chapter of this volume charts the lifelong interest of Sweden's greatest poet Gustaf Fröding (1860-1911) in the novels and poems of Scott. It analyses Fröding's debt to Scott in two of his earliest poetic efforts 'Claverhouse' (inspired by Old Mortality) and 'Abbotsford' (which grieves for the passing of Romanticism in the person of its 'greatest bard'). Echoes of Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, and Waverley are traced in later poems, and Scott's view of Scottish history is shown to inform Fröding's own interpretation of the decline of the feudal nobility in Sweden. It is also through Scott that Fröding is introduced to perhaps his greatest influence, Robert Burns. The Scott-related poems are printed in the third chapter with English prose translations.

Great Scott!: Celebrating Sir Walter Scott (Glasgow?: Waverley Books, 2014) 61 p., ill., ports.

Published as part of the Great Scott! campaign to mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Waverley and the 10th anniversary of Edinburgh's designation as a UNESCO City of Literature, this free volume featured 'wise and witty' quotes from his poetry, novels and journals, and ideas for places to visit and books to read. 25,000 copies were distributed were given away for free at Edinburgh's Waverley Station, and the boy is also available as a free download in a variety of formulas.

Hardie, Kath. Sir Walter Scott: An Illustrated Historical Guide (Norwich: Jarrold, 2001) 30 p. ISBN: 0711716706

Amply illustrated biographical introduction seeking to heighten awareness of Scott's 'contribution to the cultural fabric of his country'.

Harvey Wood, Harriet. Sir Walter Scott (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2004) 128 p. ISBN: 0746308132

Part of the Writers and their Work series published in association with the British Council, this volume is aimed at upper secondary and undergraduate students and their teachers in the UK and overseas, and is also designed for the general reader. It places Scott's work in the context of the social and political changes which affected late eighteenth-century Scotland. It gives a brief account of his life and charts his development as a poet and novelist, and seeks to justify his claims to attention as a major 19th-century novelist and seminal influence on later writers.

Harvie, Christopher. 1814 Year of 'Waverley': How Walter Scott's Novel Changed Us, ill. Scoular Anderson (Glendaruel, Argyll: Argyll Publishing, 2013) 124 p., ill. ISBN: 9781908931238

This volume first provides a guide to Scott's life, including his career in Edinburgh and the Borders, as schoolboy, lawyer, ballad-collector, translator, and writer, all set against the background of the French and Industrial Revolutions. It then provides an outline of the plot of Waverley, mapping it onto Scott's times, and goes on to chart the novel's impact in Europe and America, with particular emphasis on dramatic and operatic adaptations.

Hewitt, Regina. Symbolic Interactions: Social Problems and Literary Interventions in the Works of Baillie, Scott, and Landor (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2006) 280 p. ISBN: 838756395

Taking literally Joanna Baillie’s claim that drama can promote social justice, the study explores how plays by Baillie, novels by Walter Scott (especially The Bride of Lammermoor, The Heart of Midlothian, and Redgauntlet), and Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage Landor address problems of capital punishment, poverty, and political participation. Baillie’s and Scott’s preoccupation with affective responses to criminals and beggars takes on new significance when situated next to nationalist efforts to use legal differences to promulgate an image of Scotland as a more compassionate society than England and when contrasted with Landor’s confidence in political claims-making to meet social needs. The study enlists analogies between the 'symbolic interaction' prompted by the selected writers and the concepts of 'symbolic interaction' still evolving from the sociology of Jane Addams, George Herbert Mead, and subsequent practitioners to recover a belief in the social efficacy of literature that was accepted during the pre-disciplinary Romantic era but contested throughout much of the twentieth century.

Higuchi, Kinzo. Woruta Sukotto no rekishi shosetsu: Sukottorando no rekishi densho monogatari (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2006) 274 p. ISBN: 4269710322

Japanese monograph on 'Historical novels by Walter Scott: History, Folklore, and Narrative in Scotland'.

Hill, Richard J. Picturing Scotland through the Waverley Novels: Walter Scott and the Origins of the Victorian Illustrated Novel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) 236 p. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6806-0

This study examines the genesis and production of the first author-approved illustrations for Scott's Waverley novels in Scotland. Consulting numerous neglected primary sources, Richard J. Hill demonstrates that Scott, usually seen as indifferent to the mechanics of publishing, was actually at the forefront of one of the most innovative publishing and printing trends, the illustrated novel. Hill examines the historical precedents, influences, and innovations behind the creation of the illustrated editions, tracking Scott's personal interaction with the mechanics of the printing and illustration process, as well as Scott's opinions on visual representations of literary scenes. Hill focuses, in particular, on Scott's relationships with William Allan and Alexander Nasmyth, two important early nineteenth-century Scottish artists. As the first illustrators of the Waverley novels, their work provided a template for one of the most lucrative publishing phenomena. Picturing Scotland is augmented by a bibliographic catalogue of illustrations.

Jackson-Houlston, C. M. Gendering Walter Scott: Sex, Violence and Romantic Period Writing (London: Routledge, 2017) 270 p. ISBN: 9781472456274

Employing gender as a unifying critical focus, Caroline Jackson-Houlston draws on the full range of Walter Scott’s novels to propose new links between Scott and Romantic-era authors such as Sophia Lee, Jane Porter, Jane Austen, Sydney Owenson, Elizabeth Hands, Thomas Love Peacock, and Robert Bage. In Scott, Jackson-Houlston suggests, sex and violence are united in a central feature of the genre of romance, the trope of raptus—the actual or threatened kidnapping of a woman and her subjection to physical or psychic violence. Though largely favouring the Romantic-period drive towards delicacy of subject-matter and expression, Scott also exhibited a residual sympathy for frankness and openness resisted by his publishers, especially towards the end of his career, when he increasingly used the freedoms inherent in romance as a mode of narrative to explore and critique gender assumptions. Thus, while Scott’s novels inherit a tradition of chivalric protectiveness towards women, they both exploit and challenge the assumption that a woman is always essentially definable as a potential sexual victim. Moreover, he consistently condemns the aggressive male violence characteristic of older models of the hero, in favour of restraint and domesticity that are not exclusively feminine, but compatible with the Scottish Enlightenment assumptions of his upbringing. A high proportion of Scott’s female characters are consistently more rational than their male counterparts, illustrating how he plays conflicting concepts of sexual difference off against one another. Jackson-Houlston illuminates Scott’s ambivalent reliance on the attractions of sex and violence, demonstrating how they enable the interrogation of gender convention throughout his fiction.

Ibn Warraq. Sir Walter Scott's Crusades and Other Fantasies (Nashville, TN: New English Review Press, 2013) 260 p. ISBN-10: 0988477858; ISBN-13: 978-0988477858

This monograph compares Scott's Ivanhoe and The Talisman (and their British sources) with what is known from Arab sources and biographers about Saladin and the Crusades. He goes on to discuss antisemitism in the Medieval era and the emergence of the early Christian Zionist movement in literature focusing especially on the work of George Eliot and Charlotte Elizabeth.

Irvine, Robert P. Enlightenment and Romance: Gender and Agency in Smollett and Scott (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000) 224 p. ISBN: 390675894X

This study places the novels of Tobias Smollett and Scott in two critical contexts: the rise of the human or social sciences from the mid-18th century; and the dominance of the novel by women writers throughout the 18th century. It argues that both authors, although often seen as quintessentially masculine, use the discourses of the feminine romance or domestic novel to figure authorial control over narrative structure. It suggests that they do so in order to combine Utopian plot resolutions which enact a nostalgic Tory ideology with an essentially deterministic account of history derived from the human sciences of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Jefferson, D. W. Walter Scott: An Introductory Essay (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2002) xii, 116 p. ISBN: 1903765102

Published shortly after Douglas Jefferson's death in 2001, this volume argues that a rediscovery of Scott's works is long overdue. Scott, it claims, was 'largely responsible for great shifts of consciousness, changes of attitude to past and present, [and] a new sense of human community'. Consequently, Jefferson believes there can be few more serious and more common gaps in an English literary education than the omission of Scott. He goes on to discuss the novels on which a reappraisal should be based: The Heart of Midlothian, Waverley, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Bride of Lammermoor, and Redgauntlet.

Jones, Catherine. Literary Memory: Scott's Waverley Novels and the Psychology of Narrative (Lewisburg, PA.: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2003) 249 p. ISBN: 0838755399

This study explores the relationship of memory to writing in the 'long' eighteenth century in Scotland and America. It argues for Scott's adaptation and development of varieties of 'literary memory' from the philosophy and psychological theory of the Scottish Enlightenment, while distinguishing Scott's achievement from later Freudian theories and representations. It then analyses the ideological rejection of the cultural synthesis represented by Scott's "literary memory" by the New England romance writers, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Kelly, Stuart. Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation (Edinburgh: Polygon, 2010) 320 p. ISBN: 9781846971075

Scott's name and image are everywhere -- from Bank of Scotland five-pound notes to the Monument in Edinburgh's city centre -- yet today he has relatively few readers. Stuart Kelly explores the enigma of Scott and, in a voyage around Scotland, charts the disparity between his influence and his status, his current standing and his cultural legacy.

Kilpatrick, David. Walter Scott's Kelso: The Untold Story, Heritage Walk, & Maps, ill. Margaret Peach (Kelso: Kelso & District Amenity Society, c2005) [25] p.

This booklet argues that Scott's links with Kelso were more extensive and important than has been hitherto been acknowledged. It notes that Scott spent his summers at his uncle Captain Robert Scott’s house of Rosebank until he was almost thirty years of age, eventually inheriting the property in 1804. It charts Scott's relations with the Ballantyne Brothers, the establishment of the Ballantyne Press (with money obtained through the sale of Rosebank), and the publication of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The final chapter records the fate (and sometimes destruction) of many of Kelso's Scott-related sites. A map of a 'Scott Trail' is included. The Kelso & District Amenity Society have kindly permitted the Walter Scott Digital Archive to provide a link to a PDF copy of the booklet.

Kloss, Benjamin. Die Abhängigkeit und Loslösung Larras und Escosuras vom Modell des historischen Romans Walter Scotts (Berlin : Schmidt Verl., 2003) 280 p. ISBN: 3503061754

This study challenges the long-held critical assumption that Spanish historical novelists slavishly imitated Scott. It shows that in their novels El doncel de Don Enrique el Doliente (1834) and Ni rey ni roque (1835), Mariano José de Larra (1809-1837) and Patricio de la Escosura (1807-1878) reject Scott's faith in historical progress. Larra's narrative method is underpinned by an essentially personal historical pessimism, while Escosura follows Spanish Enlightenment and Liberal thought in seeing post-16th-century Spanish history as a process of continual decline.

Korenowska, Leslawa. Scott, Dickens, Dostojewski: o transformacji motywów = Skott, Dikkens, Dostoevskij: o transformatsii motivov (Kraków: [The Author], 2005) 216 p. ISBN: 8392247108

Russian-language text, published in Poland, on Dostoyevsky's transformation of motifs found in the works of Scott and Dickens.

Lampart, Fabian. Zeit und Geschichte: die mehrfachen Anfänge des historischen Romans bei Scott, Arnim, Vigny und Manzoni (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2002) 416 p. ISBN: 382602267X

Lampart argues that discussion of the 19th-century historical novel as a genre has concentrated too narrowly on the Scottian model. Analyzing Achim von Arnim's Die Kronenwächter, Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi, and Alfred de Vigny's Cinq-Mars, he argues that they propose autonomous, alternative models in conscious opposition to Scott. Only an awareness of this experimental background, Lampart argues, permits us to place later 20th-century variations on and parodies of the historical novel in a more precise literary-historical perspective.

Lee, Yoon Sun. Nationalism and Irony: Burke, Scott, Carlyle (New York: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2004) viii, 222 p. ISBN: 0195162358

This study shows how Romantic nationalism in Britain explored irony's potential as a powerful source of civic cohesion. The period's leading conservative voices, self-consciously non-English figures such as Burke, Scott (particularly in The Antiquary), and Carlyle, accentuated rather than disguised the anomalous character of Britain's identity, structure, and history. Their irony publicly fractured while upholding sentimental fictions of national wholeness. Britain's politics of deference, its reverence for tradition, and its celebration of productivity all became not only targets of irony but occasions for its development as a patriotic institution.

Lincoln, Andrew. Walter Scott and Modernity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007) x, 250 p. ISBN: 9780748626069

This study argues that, far from turning away from modernity to indulge a nostalgic vision of the past, Scott uses the past as means of exploring key problems in the modern world. Examining both narrative poems and novels, it explores the impact of the French revolution on attitudes to tradition, national heritage, historical change and modernity in the romantic period, considers how the experience of empire influenced ideas about civilized identity, and how ideas of progress could be used both to rationalise the violence of empire and to counteract demands for political reform. It also shows how current issues of debate - from relations between Western and Islamic cultures, to the political significance of the private conscience in a liberal society - are anticipated in the romantic era.

Lumsden, Alison. Walter Scott and the Limits of Language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) 256 p. ISBN: 978-0748641536

This study explores Scott's startlingly contemporary approach to theories of language and the creative impact of this on his work. Alison Lumsden examines the linguistic diversity and creative playfulness of Scott's fiction and suggests that an evolving scepticism towards the communicative capacities of language runs through his writing. Lumsden re-examines this scepticism in relation to Scottish Enlightenment thought and recent developments in theories of the novel. Structured chronologically, the book covers Scott's output from his early narrative poems until the late, and only recently published, Reliquiae Trotcosienses.

McCracken-Flesher, Caroline. Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 240 p. ISBN: 0195169670

This study disputes the prevalent twentieth-century view that Scott provided stories of the past that allowed his country no future, pushing it 'out of history'. McCracken-Flesher argues that the tales Scott told, however romanticized, opened up a narrative space where the nation is always imaginable. She reads across Scott’s complex characters and plots, his many personae, his interventions in his nation’s nineteenth-century politics, to reveal an energetic producer of literary and national culture working to prevent a simple or singular message. Scott is presented as an author for post-Devolution Scotland's new times, inviting readers into his texts to develop multiple and forward-looking interpretations of a Scotland always in formation. For an online review by Penny Fielding in the Cambridge Quarterly, click here.

McIntosh, Fiona. La Vraisemblance narrative: Walter Scott, Barbey d'Aurevilly (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2002)

This study stresses the experimental, self-questioning nature of the historical novel in Scott's hands. His works are an often anguished meditation on the possibility of narrating events foreign to the reader's world, offering partial and consciously imperfect answers. Scott's conviction that all narrative is a compromise between the subjectivity of the narrator and the imagination of the reader is shared by the French writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-89). Far from the magisterial certainties of Realism and Naturalism, Scott and Barbey believe that all narrative, whether fictional or factual, is filtered through the writer's gaze, but argue that to acknowledge the presence of that gaze is the most honest means to reach the truth.

Mack, Douglas S. Scottish Fiction and the British Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) v, 247 p. ISBN: 0748618147

Although not specifically devoted to Scott, this monograph contains more extended analyses of Scott's work than could be coherently dealt with under Articles and Chapters. Scott is identified as a major shaper of the imperial master narrative, helping to generate and sustain English acceptance of an Imperial British identity that is not exclusively English. His 'elite' or 'officer class' perspective is contrasted with the 'subaltern' narratives of James Hogg. Hogg's The Three Perils of Women (1823) is read as a powerful critique of Waverley challenging Scott's efforts to harness the Highlands to the imperial cause. The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818) is read as a response to Scott's Old Mortality vindicating the Covenanters from Scott's charge of fanaticism. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) is seen to contain an attack on Scott's antiquarian attitude to rural literature. Satirical versions of Hogg are identified in Scott's own narrative in the figure of Gurth in Ivanhoe and the Wild Boar of the Ardennes in Quentin Durward. Where the emphasis is on the Hogg-Scott relationship, there are also readings of John Galt's Ringan Gilhaize (1823) as a riposte to Old Mortality and Stevenson's Kidnapped and Catriona as a reworking and refocussing of the Waverley narrative pattern to portray a recently conquered Highlands exploited by a corrupt government.

McLane, Maureen N. Balladeering, Minstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) xiii, 295 p. ISBN: 9780521895767

This study focuses on the relationship between Romantic poetry and the production, circulation, and textuality of ballads. By discussing the ways in which eighteenth-century cultural and literary researches flowed into and shaped key canonical works, it argues that romantic poetry's influences went far beyond the merely literary. Addressing the revival of the ballad, the figure of the minstrel, and the prevalence of a 'minstrelsy complex' in romanticism, it envisages a new way of engaging with romantic poetics, encompassing both 'oral' and 'literary' modes of poetic construction, and anticipates the role that technology might play in a media-driven twenty-first century. McLane deals extensively with Scott's ballad-collecting and with the mediation of ballad sources and representation of orality in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. (See McLane 2002, McLane 2003, and McLane 2004 for earlier versions of three of the chapters in this study.)

Macrone, John. The Life of Sir Walter Scott, ed. Daniel Grader; with an essay by Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013) 168 p. ISBN : 9780748669912

John Macrone, who wrote this life of Scott in 1832-33, was admirably suited to the task; for, while he had never met Scott, his friends and associates included Alan Cunningham, John Galt, and James Hogg, who wrote his Anecdotes of Scott for publication in Macrone's book. A quarrel with John Gibson Lockhart, however, put a stop to the project, and nothing more was heard of it until the recent discovery of an autograph manuscript, here edited and published for the first time. A well-written and carefully-researched narrative, it increases our knowledge of Scott's life and work as perceived by his contemporaries, as well as enabling us to read Hogg's Anecdotes in their original context. The editor's introduction draws extensively on uncollected and unpublished material to illuminate Macrone's career, in the course of which he became the friend and publisher of Dickens, Thackeray, and Moore.y.)

Mancini, Michela. Immaginando 'Ivanhoe': romanzi illustrati, balli e opere teatrali dell'Ottocento italiano (Milan: B. Mondadori, 2007) vii, 133 p. ISBN: 9788842421016

Charts the Italian reception of Ivanhoe via the novels, tales, illustrations, paintings, operas, ballets, and dramas that it inspired, showing how it helped define new tendencies in taste and new models of behaviour that became fundamental to Italian Romantic culture. Mancini's study highlights the novel's profound influence on the construction of a nascent Italian national identity.

Matsui, Yuko. Sukotto = Walter Scott, 1771-1832: hito to bungaku (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2007) 297 p. ISBN: 4585071679; 9784585071679

Japanese-language monograph on Scott's life and work.

Maxwell, Richard. The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) viii, 323 p. ISBN-13: 9780521519670

In the first comprehensive study of the subject for many years, Richard Maxwell highlights both the French invention and Scottish re-invention of historical fiction, showing how these two events prepared the genre's broad popularity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Historical Novel charts how the genre began in seventeenth-century France as a distinctive way of combining historical chronologies with fictive narrative, then underwent a further transformation in Scott's hands, inspired by both antiquarian scholarship and crisis-oriented journalism. As French Romantic authors in turn elaborated on Scott's innovations, a distinctive Franco-Scottish model of historical fiction developed, which Maxwell explores via two well-established story types: 'pretenders in sanctuary' (where a deposed monarch returns from a place of sanctuary to reclaim a throne) and siege narratives. The concluding chapters show how in both Europe and the Americas, the historical novel became as much a way of reading and a set of expectations as a memorable collection of books. (See Maxwell 2000, Maxwell 2001, and Maxwell 2006 for earlier explorations of some of the material in this study.)

Mayer, Robert. Walter Scott and Fame: Authors and Readers in the Romantic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) 240 p. ISBN: 9780198794820

Walter Scott and Fame is a study of correspondences between Scott and socially and culturally diverse readers of his work in the English-speaking world in the early nineteenth century. Examining authorship, reading, and fame, the book is based on extensive archival research, especially in the collection of letters to Scott in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Mayer demonstrates that in Scott's literary correspondence constructions of authorship, reading strategies, and versions of fame are posited, even theorized. Scott's reader-correspondents invest him with power but they also attempt to tap into or appropriate some of his authority. Scott's version of authorship sets him apart from important contemporaries like Wordsworth and Byron, who adhered, at least as Scott viewed the matter, to a rarefied conception of the writer as someone possessed of extraordinary power. The idea of the author put in place by Scott in dialogue with his readers establishes him as a powerful figure who is nevertheless subject to the will of his audience. Scott's literary correspondence also demonstrates that the reader can be a very powerful figure and that we should regard reading not just as the reception of texts but also as the apprehension of an author-function. Thus, Scott's correspondence makes it clear that the relationship between authors and readers is a dynamic, often fraught, connection, which needs to be understood in terms of the new culture of celebrity that emerged during Scott's working life. Along with Byron, the study shows, Scott was at the centre of this transformation.

Merten, Kai. Intermediales Text-Theater: Die Bühne des Politischen und des Wissens vom Menschen bei Wordsworth und Scott (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), xiv, 444 p. ISBN: 978-3-11-033900-0

This book reveals the latent working of the theatre in British Romantic literature. It shows how two central writers, Wordsworth and Scott, were fascinated by concepts of theatre that could not be implemented on the British stage, and how they both addressed and practised this theatre in their own texts.The book highlights the importance of the theatre both as a medium and as a discursive field to address aesthetic, political and epistemic questions around 1800. It proceeds to explore the unsuccessful implementation of this modern theatre in early dramas of Wordsworth and Scott and its continuing influence on their later works. Detailed analyses of Wordsworth’s poetry and Scott’s novels illustrate how both writers used the genres they chose to develop a specific form of textual theatre. Finally, the study shows how this concept of theatre returned to the British stage to influence subsequent periods of theatre practice.

Monnickendam, Andrew. The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations: Mary Brunton, Susan Ferrier, and Christian Johnstone (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 216 p. ISBN: 9781137276544

For the first time, this study examines Scott through the filter of his female contemporaries. Examining works by Mary Brunton, Susan Ferrier and Christian Johnstone, it explores the ways in which their work interacts with Scott's fiction, casting questions about desire, the heroine and the love-plot in a new, more human light. Of particular interest are the accounts of the hero, and, above all, that fundamental subject of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British culture: the union. In focusing on the works of these critically neglected female authors, the book explores the national tale as a genre and rethinks Scott's contribution to this genre.

Müllenbrock, Heinz-Joachim. Der historische Roman: Aufsätze (Heidelberg: Winter, 2003) 224 p. ISBN: 3825315037

This collection of essays (in German and English) examines the genesis and functional development of the historical novel from an interdisciplinary perspective. The opening section is devoted to Scott with chapters on Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian, Scott and Cervantes, Scott's immediate precursors, the relationship between the historical novel as a hybrid genre and contemporary historiography, nature and history, and a survey of recent Scott criticism. The remaining two sections discuss Scott's Victorian successors and offer a comparativist approach to the historical novel (including chapters on Scott and the German writers Benedikte Naubert and Theodor Fontane).

Napton, Dani. Scott’s Novels and the Counter-Revolutionary Politics of Place (Netherlands: Brill, 2018) 244 p. ISBN: 9789004352780

Counter-revolutionary or wary progressive? Critical apologist for the Stuart and Hanoverian dynasties? What are the political and cultural significances of place when Scott represents the instabilities generated by the Union? Scott's Novels and the Counter-Revolutionary Politics of Place analyses Scott’s sophisticated, counter-revolutionary interpretation of Britain's past and present in relation to those questions. Exploring the diversity within Scott’s life and writings, as historian and political commentator, conservative committed to progress, Scotsman and Briton, lawyer and philosopher, this monograph focuses on how Scott portrays and analyses the evolution of the state through notions of place and landscape. It especially considers Scott’s response to revolution and rebellion, and his geopolitical perspective on the transition from Stuart to Hanoverian sovereignty.

Niehaus, Michael. Autoren unter sich: Walter Scott, Willibald Alexis, Wilhelm Hauff und andere in einer literarischen Affäre (Heidelberg: Synchron, 2002) 109 p. ISBN: 393502536X.

In 1823 Willibald Alexis passed off his novel Walladmor as a translation of a new work by Scott. Inspired by Alexis’s example, Wilhelm Hauff attributed his novel Der Mann im Mond to the popular German author Heinrich Clauren. Hauff was prosecuted, but this did not prevent another hitherto unknown author Karl Herloßsohn from publishing a further novel in Clauren’s name. Niehaus argues that this celebrated affair, which reflected both the growing industrialization of literature and the substantial absence of copyright legislation. raises fundamental questions concerning the nature of authorship. For an online review (in German) by Natalie Binczek in the Internationalen Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, click here.

Oliver, Susan. Scott, Byron, and the Poetics of Cultural Encounter (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) xv, 241 p. ISBN: 1403994749

This is an innovative study of Scott's and Byron's poetical engagement with borders (actual and metaphorical) and the people living on and around them. Oliver discusses Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and Scott's own narrative poems, then goes on to consider Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Eastern Tales, and the late, utopian South-Sea poem The Island. Oliver provides a detailed exegesis of the importance of borders to both the poets and their readers during the early years of the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on reciprocal literary influences, and on attitudes towards cultural instability.

Pittock, Murray (ed.) The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe (London: Continuum, 2006) lxxiv, 396 p. ISBN: 9780826474100

Part of the series The Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, this volume charts how Scott's historical fiction brought the ideas of Enlightenment to bear on the novel and created for the first time a sense of the past as a place where people thought, felt and dressed differently. His writing influenced Balzac, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dumas, Pushkin and many others; and Scott's interpretation of history was seized on by Romantic nationalists, particularly in Eastern Europe. This book gives for the first time a comprehensive account of the impact of Scott in Europe, from the early and highly influential translations of Defauconpret in France to the continued politicization and censorship of the novels in modern East Germany and Franco's Spain. Generic chapters examine Scott's presence in art and opera, two cultural forms which were deeply affected by his novels. Individual contributions are listed under Articles and Chapters on Sir Walter Scott Published in 2006. See Altshuller 2006, Bachleitner 2006, Barnaby 2006a, Barnaby 2006b, Bautz 2006, Durie 2006, García González and Toda 2006, Hubbard 2006, Maxwell 2006, Modrzewska 2006, Monnickendam 2006, Nielsen 2006, M. G. H. Pittock 2006b, Procházka 2006, Reitemeier 2006, Smolej 2006, Szaffner 2006, Szamosi 2006, Tambling 2006, Wright 2006.

Purser, Judith (ed.) The Waverley Operas: Musical Adaptations of Sir Walter Scott: A Library Exhibition: Exhibition Catalogue ([Parkville, Vic.]: University of Melbourne Library, 2002) 1 v. (unpaged)

Catalogue of an exhibition held 1 May-14 June 2002, Baillieu Library, Information Division, University of Melbourne.

Reid, Michaela. The Forest Club, 1788-2000: The History of a Border Dining and Coursing Club Associated with Sir Walter Scott (Selkirk: Forest Club, 2003) 330 p. ISBN: 0954447905

In 1801 Scott was elected to the Forest Club, which had been formed in 1788 by a group of thirteen landowners residing within the Ettrick Forest. Closely connected through kinship and neighbourhood to many fellow members, Scott wrote about them with candour and pithiness in his Journal and Letters and, on occasions, depicted them as characters in his novels. The Club's history covers a period which includes the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the great Reform Bill of 1832, the agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century, the Great War, World War II, the introduction of the modern state and the Millennium. During this time while dress and ceremonial have remained much the same as in the eighteenth century, meeting times, mode of travel, eating and drinking habits have changed radically, as have members' lifestyles.

Reitemeier, Frauke. Deutsch-englische Literaturbeziehungen: der Historische Roman Sir Walter Scotts und seine Deutschen Vorläufer (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2001) 290 p. ISBN: 3506708295

Reitemeier argues that the tendency to see Waverley as the first real historical novel has led critics to neglect Scott's debt to earlier German historical novels. Through a structural comparison between the various models of the German historical novel and those of Scott's English-speaking predecessors, he argues that Scott's own practice is closer to the former. In particular, Benedikte Naubert (1756-1819), whom Scott read in translation, is an important influence both in her ambition simultaneously to entertain and to educate, and in her use of the Vehme motif (which Scott uses, for example, in his 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein). For an online review (in German) by Johannes Süßmann in the Internationalen Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, click here.

Rigney, Ann. The Afterlives of Walter Scott: Memory on the Move (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 328 p. ISBN: 9780199644018

This volume explores how Scott's work became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why it no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the 'social life' of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Rigney pays attention to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of 'Scott' as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, she demonstrates how remembering Scott's work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War One, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire and the United States. Scott's work forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernization. His legacy continues in the widespread belief that engaging with the past is a condition for transcending it.

Robertson, Fiona (ed.) The Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012) 240 p. ISBN: 9780748641291 (pbk), 9780748641307 (hbk)

The Edinburgh Companion to Sir Walter Scott, the first collection of its kind devoted to his work, draws on the innovative research and scholarship which have revitalised the study of the whole range of his exceptionally diverse writing in recent years. Chapters written by leading international scholars provide an indispensable guide to his work in different genres and reflect the topics and concerns which are most exciting in Scott scholarship today, including his place in literary and popular culture, his experimentation and originality, his relationship to Romanticism, and the revaluation of lesser-known works. Individual contributions are listed under Articles and Chapters on Sir Walter Scott Published in 2012. See Ferris 2012, McNeil 2012, Lumsden and McIntosh 2012, McCracken-Flesher 2012b, C. A. Jones 2012, Baker 2012, Marshall 2012, Robertson 2012b, Wallace 2012, Dick 2012a, Duncan 2012a, and N. J. Watson 2012a.

Sabiron, Céline. Écrire la frontière: Walter Scott ou les chemins de l'errance (Aix-Marseille: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2016) 219 p. ISBN: 9791032000366

A borderer himself, Walter Scott was well-placed to write about borders from both a concrete/topological and abstract/theoretical perspective. Born in a period of historial transition, and in a Janus-faced city split between its Old and New Towns, he passed his early youth in the Anglo-Scottish Border Country. As pivotal and connective structures, borders are the real heroes of the Waverley Novels. Scott's fictional work is from the outset thematically devoted to movement and particularly 'wandering' or 'wavering' (in the Scots sense). His plots hinge upon border crossings, both physical and symbolic, which constitute initiatory ordeals or rites of passage for the hero. This monograph considers the role of borders in Scott within the context of travel literature devoted to Scott, by writers such as Defoe, Pennant, Johnson, and Boswell, and within the historical framework of the 18th century's cult of travel.

Sir Walter Scott (New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset, 2001) 188 p. The Scottish Histories. ISBN: 1842051024

Part of a series on great figures in Scottish history, the text is an adaptation of George Saintsbury's 1897 life of Scott. Besides the biographical narrative which includes a particularly full account of the financial crisis of 1826, it presents a critical assessment of Scott's major works.

Soto Vázquez, Adolfo Luis. Novela regional inglesa y sus traducciones al español: Henry Fielding y Walter Scott: estudio textual y traductológico (A Coruña: Servizo de Publicacións da Universidade da Coruña, 2008) 180 p. ISBN: 9788497492935

This Spanish-language monologue is a textual and translatological study of dialect use in the works of Scott and Henry Fielding, which had a global impact by way of numerous translations into a great variety of languages. The dialects, jargons, and malapropisms used by some of the characters, and employed in a highly calculated way by the authors, present a challenge for any conscientious translator. Soto Vázquez sets out to analyse and evaluate the solutions proposed by translators, with a view to establishing possible roadmaps for the revision of these translations (which are always perfectible). [Site editor's translation of blurb]

Speer, Roderick S. Byron and Scott: The Waverley Novels and Historical Engagement (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) 125 p. ISBN-10: 1443805874, ISBN-13: 978-1443805872

Literary historians have repeatedly observed that while Scott was the first British literary lion of the nineteenth century, his fame as a poet was supplanted by Byron starting in 1812. But that is as far as they take the relationship seriously, for the two writers are traditionally thought of as very different, even as political and temperamental opposites. But in fact, the two writers met each other in 1815, liked each other, and cherished their friendship the rest of their lives. The story of their relationship in personal terms was not over. Nor was the literary relationship, this study ventures. Scott embarked on an entirely new career in 1814, inventing the historical novel. Byron was swept away by the Waverley Novels and in his years of exile to the Continent from 1816 on, repeatedly beseeched his publisher to send Scott’s latest novels. The position here is that those novels were important to Byron’s development in both literary and existential respects. Byron’s historical dramas, his Don Juan, The Island, and his final fling, into the Greek Revolution, show an evolution of both the Byronic Hero and Byron himself in a context his friend Scott had opened up for him.

Stechern, David. Das Recht in den Romanen von Sir Walter Scott (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2003) XXXII, 152 p. ISBN: 3825866734

This study discusses four aspects of Scott's literary treatment of law. Stechern first examines the feudal legal background to Ivanhoe with particular emphasis on inheritance law, hunting rights, and trial by ordeal. The following section turns to 17th- and 18th-century Scots Law, discussing infanticide (The Heart of Midlothian), entail (Waverley), insolvency (Guy Mannering, The Antiquary), and the poor laws (Guy Mannering). Stechern next analyses the impact of the Union on appellate procedure (The Bride of Lammermoor) and the law of high treason (Rob Roy, Waverley). The final chapter deals with the development of the office of Justice of the Peace in 18th-century Britain with reference to Rob Roy and Guy Mannering. The conclusion assesses Scott's view of the role of the advocate.

Todd, William B., and Ann Bowden. A Short-Title Catalogue of Sir Walter Scott in the Todd-Bowden Library (Austin: Portcullis Press, 2000) 50 p.

In 1998, the husband-and-wife team of William B. Todd and Ann Bowden (1924-2001) published the monumental Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History, 1796-1832, now established as the standard bibliography of Scott. This volume provides a catalogue of Scott holdings in their personal library.

Wilson, A. N. Walter Scott: The Laird Of Abbotsford (London: Pimlico, 2002) xvi, 197 p. ISBN: 0712697543

A critical biography first published in 1980 as The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott (Oxford University Press). Wilson resists attempts to divorce the life of 'the greatest single imaginative genius of the nineteenth century' from his work, arguing that both display the same genius, humaneness, and qualities of stoicism and sympathy. He equally opposes the view that Scott's talents were realized in only a few of his works, perceiving a coherent opus where other critics have seen discord, discontinuity, or decline.

Yonemoto, Koichi. Fikushon to shiteno rekishi: Woruta Sukotto no katari no giho (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2007) 302 p. ISBN: 4269720840

Japanese study on 'History as Fiction: The Narrative Arts of Walter Scott'.

Back to top

Back to General Index of Recent Publications