Annette Ranald's Blog: Annette's History Reads - Posts Tagged "sir-walter-scott"

The Works of Sir Walter ScottI was a true nerd throughout school. I got hooked on history early on and stayed that way, with my nose in a book while the 80's in all their glory whirled by without my noticing. What other kid willingly reads Shakespeare in high school, and who's ever heard of Sir Walter Scott? I found his novels in one of the back shelves of the library and read some of them again and again. In fact, I was still reading them well into college.

Walter Scott (1771-1832), was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was frail as a child, and was sent to his grandparents home on the Scottish Borders to recover his health. What he discovered instead were the tales and legends of Scotland's Borders Region. He later returned to Edinburgh, where his fascination with the Borders turned into a fascination with Scottish history, and then history in general. This is history in the grand, romantic, Gothic style, knights, fair maidens, midnight escapes, and ghosts in crumbling castle towers.

Of course, then as now, history doesn't pay the bills unless you teach it or you get lucky and your books sell. Scott was trained for the bar, and became a lawyer, a court clerk, and later a judge. Practicing law by day, and writing at night, he soon developed a following for his books. In fact, although he only made a bare living at it later in life, he was the first novelist to develop a following in his own lifetime. His books were popular in Britain, Europe, and America, and they remained so until the craze for all things Jane Austen relegated Sir Walter Scott to the children's bookshelf in the mid-nineteenth century.

The boost that Scott gave to national pride in Scotland cannot be underestimated. When he was a boy, there were people around who still remembered Bonnie Prince Charlie and the '45 Jacobite Rising. There were also people who had decided opinions about it, often based on religious lines. To pine for Auld Scotland, with its mythic heroes, was to have Jacobite and Catholic leanings, which for an up and coming lawyer from a Presbyterian family, wouldn't do. Through his novels, though, Scott could bring those characters and old ways back. He's credited with being one of the first historical novelists. Once his stories hit the Royal Family, and he became a Baronet with the right to be called Sir, he'd hit the mainstream. He even accomplished his life's dream with his own estate on the Borders, Abbotsford, though it took all the money from his practice and his books to keep up.

My favorites among Sir Walter's books, Ivanhoe. If you need convincing, just watch the 1952 movie with Robert Taylor and Liz, and you can see why. I also read and loved the first Waverly Novel (and had a crush on poor, tragic Chief Fergus MacIvor). The Talisman, featuring young Prince David of Scotland as a knight in disguise on crusade with Richard the Lionheart, was another favorite. I like Braveheart and the Bruce well enough, but my A-1 Scottish character has always been the James Graham, First Marquis of Montrose, and I have a soft spot for Rob Roy, both of whom feature in several of Scott's tales.

The only thing that I grew out of with Sir Walter Scott was the use of Gothic elements in the tales. Elements which, ironically, are now all the rage. I'm too old or the magic charms, inherited second sight, ghosts in crumbling towers part of it. My goal, if I ever become a successful author with time to kill, is to resurrect some of these old stories, with more genuine history thrown in, and none of the supernatural clutter. In today's world of vampires, zombies, changlings, and psychic phenomena, I think those things are rather tired.