The Complete Novels of Sir Walter Scott: Waverly, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, The Pirate, Old Mortality, The Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, The Heart of Midlothian ... Black Dwarf, The Monastery, The Abbot...

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So if you liked The Three Musketeers and Lord of the Rings, try this more realistic daredevil romance! The novels were all originally printed by James Ballantyne on the Canongate in Edinburgh. James Ballantyne was the brother of one of Scott's close friends, John Ballantyne ("Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co., Edinburgh"). Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh in 1771, spent the majority of his early childhood in a cramped apartment with his parents Anne and Walter. Little airflow and cleanliness in the apartment building attributed to six of Scott's siblings passing away. Scott himself contracted Polio as a young boy, resulting in his right leg becoming lame, which would remain this way for the rest of Scott's life. Later, Scott found that his works needed a more loose and free form of writing, and he expanded his epic poetry into novels. Novels were not at all popular in the 19th century, generally considered boring or a waste of words by the rest of society. Despite this, Sir Walter Scott went on to create his own form: the modern historical novel. These novels featured the recognizable names, families, and events of (usually Scottish) history with added flairs of romance and speculated personalities. One day, Frank receives a letter from his father’s partner, Mr. Tresham. The letter informs him that his father has gone to the Continent on business, leaving Rashleigh in charge; Rashleigh, however, has gone to Scotland, where he is reportedly involved in a scheme to embezzle funds from Osbaldistone and Tresham.

Frank may be horrified by this situation, but initially he cannot see how this relates to his father’s business and to the attempt to involve it in a Jacobite rising. What, he asks the Bailie, could Rob Roy possibly have to do with the affairs of his father? These Hielands of ours, as we ca’ them, gentlemen, are but a wild kind of warld by themsells, full of heights and hows, woods, caverns, lochs, rivers, and mountains, that it wad tire the very deevil’s wings to flee to the tap o’ them. And in this country, and in the isles, whilk are little better, or, to speak the truth, rather waur than the main land, there are about twa hunder and thirty parochines, including the Orkneys, where, whether they speak Gaelic or no, I wot na, but they are an uncivileized people.—Now, sirs, I sall had ilk parochine at the moderate estimate of eight hunder examinable persons, deducting childer under nine years of age, and then adding one-fifth to stand for bairns of nine years auld, and under, the whole population will reach to the sum of—let us add one-fifth to 800 to be the multiplier, and 230 being the multiplicand”— That's because major historical events provided the skeleton to all of Scott's work. So, for those of us who might be unfamiliar with Scotland's tumultuous history, some of these conflicts with their many political and religious allegiances can be hard to follow - it's true. If anything, though, that should give you an idea of the grand scope of Scott's novels. He had his sights set on these really major events that had a big impact on his country's history. He liked important characters and sweeping action.

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The unincorporated community of Ellerslie, Georgia is believed to be named for a character in the novels, Captain Ellerslie. [5] This book is best read under the slight influence of usquebaugh, but keep your dirk planted upright in the table near to hand, in case any lowlanders decide to make free with their mouths. Those bloody bastards don’t understand: “Honour is what no man can give you, and none can take away. Honour is a man's gift to himself.” And don’t let anyone...ever... step on yer tartan. Rob Roy is a historical novel narrated by Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant. He travels first to the North of England, and subsequently to the Scottish Highlands, to collect a debt stolen from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title character, Rob Roy MacGregor. Though Rob Roy is not the lead character, his personality and actions are key to the novel's development. One of the most well-known Scott poems today, "The Lady of the Lake" concerns a political battle between the Scottish Douglas clan and the English crown. This poem was released at the height of Scott's popularity and remains popular in English classrooms today. It was poems such as this that fueled Scott's wish to expand his stories into novels. Sir Walter Scott Other Works

When the cloth was removed, Mr. Jarvie compounded with his own hands a very small bowl of brandy-punch, the first which I had ever the fortune to see. Sir Walter Scott time! In his day, Sir Walter Scott was one of the most popular writers around. You probably haven't heard of him, and that's because in the time since then, history hasn't been as kind to Scott's work as it has to some of his contemporaries. That's really a shame because a lot of it's great. There's an important thing that Walter Scott's really known for, and that's his historical novels, or a fictionalized novel set in a real historical period. The Help or The Kite Runner are more recent historical novels. He was really at the forefront of that genre, so he's an important figure in literature even if his work isn't as well-known now as maybe it could be or should be. Turning now briefly and specifically to Rob Roy, it was the most clear articulation in any of his novels of the economic basis of conjectural history. Economic theory was central to the novel. The influence of Adam Smith’s ideas are obvious. Baillie Nicol Jarvie was a brilliant illustration of Smith’s idea that the selfishness of the individual pursuit of wealth can be reconciled with social obligations to one’s fellow men and country. Scott showed considerable awareness of the technical aspects of the regulation of trade and of banking and credit. The plot barely touched on the armed struggle of the ‘15 but centred on whether the Jacobites can use financial means to destabilise the British Government. Frank told us on his return to London that:

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In the name of God!” said I, “what do they do, Mr Jarvie? It makes one shudder to think of their situation.” It is customary to view kailyard stories as debased national narratives, myths of “an ideal national space” contrasted with “the outside world of degenerate city life.” [63] In this respect they are gentle, easy-going, but still canny counterparts of the more potent “tartan” myths of the romantic and noble Highlander associated with the Jacobite Rebellion and the novels of Scott. [64] They are also descendants of the Waverley novels. They exploited, as Scott did, the paradox of a people “living in a civilized age and country” who retained a strong “tincture of manners belonging to an early period of society” and “who are the last to feel the influence of that general polish which assimilates to each other the manners of different nations.” [65] In effect, kailyard novels recycled in a very diluted form Scott’s fables of belated modernity. For Scott, Scottish language and culture represented the one remaining genuine national spirit in a world where nations had become much like each other. For the kailyard novelists, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, Scotland was recast as a lost world, a strange survival from pre-modernity calculated to satisfy, as other contemporary lost world romances did, the tastes of readers from widely different nations who had truly, by then, become assimilated to each other via the mass market. The beautiful Diana Vernon, another cousin of Frank, is the love interest. She is mysteriously unattainable due to obligations previously arranged by her father. It became kind of comical for me as the plot advances that at three different times she protests that Frank...must never see her again, but the daffy woman just keeps showing up.