gather to protest economic conditions are attacked by soldiers in the Peterloo Massacre. Scott’s mother dies. George Gordon, Lord Byron’s Don Juan is published. John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is published.
1820
The Monastery and The Abbot are published. George III dies and is succeeded by George IV. Scott is elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities award him honorary doctorates.
Ivanhoe continues to be a huge success. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is published.
1821
The Pirate is published.
1822
Kenilworth and The Fortunes of Nigel are published. As Edinburgh’s most celebrated resident, Scott welcomes King George IV when he visits the city.
1823
Quentin Durward, Peveril of the Peak, and St. Ronan’s Well are published.
1824
Redgauntlet is published.
1825
Tales of the Crusaders, including The Betrothed and The Talisman , is published. Around this time, Scott begins his Journal.
1826
As a major depression grips the country, Scott faces financial ruin when the companies of his publisher and printer collapse. Scott works for the rest of his life to pay off the debt incurred by the disaster. His wife, Charlotte, dies. Woodstock is published.
1827
Life of Napoleon Buonaparte and Chronicles of the Cannongate are published. Scott finally admits to the authorship of the Waverley novels.
1828
The Fair Maid of Perth is published. Scott begins compiling materials for an annotated edition of the Waverley novels.
1829
Anne of Geierstein is published. The first volumes of the annotated “Magnum Opus” edition of the novels appear. Scott suffers several hemorrhages as his health steadily worsens.
1830
George IV dies and is succeeded by William IV. In France, the July Revolution leads to the deposition of Charles X and the accession of Louis-Philippe I.
1831
Scott has a paralytic stroke. He travels to the Mediterranean to convalesce.
1832
The fourth Tales of My Landlord series, comprising Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, is published. Scott dies at Abbotsford on September 21. He is buried beside his wife at Dryburgh Abbey.
Introduction
From the beginning, Ivanhoe was distinguished by its huge readership and cult appeal. It sold 10,000 copies in its first two weeks, an unheard-of rate in 1819. That same year, a stage version opened in New York, and later Rossini composed Ivanhoe, the opera. Walter Scott had begun his literary career two decades earlier as a collector of Scottish ballads. He then turned his hand to poetry, specializing in grand romantic vistas and heroic themes from Scottish history. “The Lady of the Lake” (1810) made his name and fortune (which he later lost). But then along came Lord Byron. Almost overnight, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage made Scott’s narrative poetry seem provincial and old hat. Making a virtue of necessity, Scott turned to fiction, with spectacular results. Waverley (1814), which looked back to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Scots rebellion of 1745, was something altogether new to the British reader: the recreation of an entire historical canvas, populated by romantic but credible characters, acting out Britain’s painful emergence from its tribal past into modernity and nationhood. Variations on these themes inspired a further sequence of highly successful “Scottish” novels until in 1819, the ever-restless Scott felt the Caledonian well had run dry, and he ventured a new tale removed in both time and place: the England of the Middle Ages. The result was a book that can lay claim to being the most widely read novel of the nineteenth century, and among the most popular of all time.
Ivanhoe maintains a strong readership today, when the rest of Scott’s extraordinary literary output has sunk into obscurity, but it has never been a great critical success. The Scott purists wish he had never traveled south to England at all, and his compatriot David Daiches typifies the twentieth-century scholarly opinion of
1820
The Monastery and The Abbot are published. George III dies and is succeeded by George IV. Scott is elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities award him honorary doctorates.
Ivanhoe continues to be a huge success. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound is published.
1821
The Pirate is published.
1822
Kenilworth and The Fortunes of Nigel are published. As Edinburgh’s most celebrated resident, Scott welcomes King George IV when he visits the city.
1823
Quentin Durward, Peveril of the Peak, and St. Ronan’s Well are published.
1824
Redgauntlet is published.
1825
Tales of the Crusaders, including The Betrothed and The Talisman , is published. Around this time, Scott begins his Journal.
1826
As a major depression grips the country, Scott faces financial ruin when the companies of his publisher and printer collapse. Scott works for the rest of his life to pay off the debt incurred by the disaster. His wife, Charlotte, dies. Woodstock is published.
1827
Life of Napoleon Buonaparte and Chronicles of the Cannongate are published. Scott finally admits to the authorship of the Waverley novels.
1828
The Fair Maid of Perth is published. Scott begins compiling materials for an annotated edition of the Waverley novels.
1829
Anne of Geierstein is published. The first volumes of the annotated “Magnum Opus” edition of the novels appear. Scott suffers several hemorrhages as his health steadily worsens.
1830
George IV dies and is succeeded by William IV. In France, the July Revolution leads to the deposition of Charles X and the accession of Louis-Philippe I.
1831
Scott has a paralytic stroke. He travels to the Mediterranean to convalesce.
1832
The fourth Tales of My Landlord series, comprising Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, is published. Scott dies at Abbotsford on September 21. He is buried beside his wife at Dryburgh Abbey.
Introduction
From the beginning, Ivanhoe was distinguished by its huge readership and cult appeal. It sold 10,000 copies in its first two weeks, an unheard-of rate in 1819. That same year, a stage version opened in New York, and later Rossini composed Ivanhoe, the opera. Walter Scott had begun his literary career two decades earlier as a collector of Scottish ballads. He then turned his hand to poetry, specializing in grand romantic vistas and heroic themes from Scottish history. “The Lady of the Lake” (1810) made his name and fortune (which he later lost). But then along came Lord Byron. Almost overnight, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage made Scott’s narrative poetry seem provincial and old hat. Making a virtue of necessity, Scott turned to fiction, with spectacular results. Waverley (1814), which looked back to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Scots rebellion of 1745, was something altogether new to the British reader: the recreation of an entire historical canvas, populated by romantic but credible characters, acting out Britain’s painful emergence from its tribal past into modernity and nationhood. Variations on these themes inspired a further sequence of highly successful “Scottish” novels until in 1819, the ever-restless Scott felt the Caledonian well had run dry, and he ventured a new tale removed in both time and place: the England of the Middle Ages. The result was a book that can lay claim to being the most widely read novel of the nineteenth century, and among the most popular of all time.
Ivanhoe maintains a strong readership today, when the rest of Scott’s extraordinary literary output has sunk into obscurity, but it has never been a great critical success. The Scott purists wish he had never traveled south to England at all, and his compatriot David Daiches typifies the twentieth-century scholarly opinion of
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