| |
More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
|
Walter Scott
|
|
|
(1771-1832, bt 1820)
Scotland's most prolific and, in his day, most successful author. He first won fame for his romantic poems set in earlier centuries, particularly The *Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and The *Lady of the Lake (1810). He started another even more successful career with his first novel, Waverley, published anonymously in 1814. This and its immediate successors, such as The *Heart of Midlothian (1818), were set in Scotland in the 17–18C. With *Ivanhoe (1819) he moved not only to an English subject but to the Middle Ages, a period with which readers increasingly associated him.
|
|
|
|
|
Scott built himself a baronial hall, *Abbotsford, but in 1826, just two years after its completion, he went spectacularly bankrupt when the crash of a publishing venture left him with huge debts. In a premature example of Victorian high-mindedness he worked himself literally to his death, six years later, to pay off his creditors. It is a measure of his influence in the age of *Romanticism that so many contemporary operas, such as Rossini's La Donna del Lago or Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, were based on his works.
|
|
|
|