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Scott-land

The ubiquitous Walter Scott
by
September 2021, no. 435

Walter Scott at 250: Looking forward by Caroline McCracken-Flesher and Matthew Wickman

Edinburgh University Press, £75 hb, 239 pp

Scott-land

The ubiquitous Walter Scott
by
September 2021, no. 435
Walter Scott, the Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian (photograph via Britannica)
Walter Scott, the Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian (photograph via Britannica)

Walter Scott, born on 15 August 1771, turns 250 in 2021. This event has been celebrated in Scotland with events such as a ScottFest at ‘Abbotsford’, his home, and a major international conference. But Scott, almost certainly the most popular and widely known author in the world in the nineteenth century, fell disastrously in public and critical esteem, to the point that E.M. Forster, in his influential Aspects of the Novel (1927), could sum him up with the wearily dismissive question ‘Who shall tell us a story?’ and the equally dismissive answer ‘Sir Walter Scott of course’. For Forster, Scott had ‘a trivial mind and a heavy style’.

Graham Tulloch reviews 'Walter Scott at 250: Looking forward' edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher and Matthew Wickman

Walter Scott at 250: Looking forward

by Caroline McCracken-Flesher and Matthew Wickman

Edinburgh University Press, £75 hb, 239 pp

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