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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BRITAIN
 
  More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)

 
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.
 








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