Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish novelist, playwright and poet who earned worldwide celebrity for his writing in the early nineteenth century. Born and educated in Edinburgh, Scott s first literary success came when a childhood friend established a printing house and offered to publish his poetry. Despite earning some success as a poet, Scott decided to publish his first novel anonymously, and released Waverly in 1814. As The Author of Waverly, Scott went on to publish dozens of novels, short stories, and poems, including Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, and The Lady of the Lake. He died in 1832 at the age of 61.
Gerard Carruthers is Reader and Head of Department in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. He is General Editor of the forthcoming multi-volume Oxford University Press edition of the works of Robert Burns and is Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies. He is also the author of Robert Burns (Northcote, 2006), editor of The Devil to Stage: Five Plays by James Bridie (ASLS, 2007), Burns: Poems (Everyman, 2006) and co-editor of Beyond Scotland: New International Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature (Rodopi, 2004), Walter Scott's Reliquiae Trotcosienses (Edinburgh University Press, 2004) and English Romanticism and the Celtic World (Cambridge University Press,… 2003).
Alison Lumsden is senior lecturer in the School of Language and Literature and codirector of the Walter Scott Research Centre at the University of Aberdeen.