29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
He is Scotland's greatest novelist but no-one reads him now. Why?
With originality and verve, he illuminated the turbulent past, mainly of Scotland, but also England and France.
Scott's phenomenal productivity was in part the result of finding himself almost bankrupt in 1825.
Yet he had been drawn to stories of the great events that shaped Scotland since he was a boy.
Despite the demands of his roles as Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire and Clerk of the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scott turned to fiction with such energy it was as if he were an uncorked bottle of champagne.
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In the space of 18 years, 27 novels fizzed out of him in a seemingly unstoppable stream, intoxicating readers worldwide and changing forever the face of his homeland.
The more vivid the period, the livelier his imagination: Waverley was about the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion; Woodstock about the Cavaliers and Roundheads; Ivanhoe took place in England after the Norman Conquest, while Old Mortality was about the Covenanters.
The Heart of Midlothian is based on the Porteous Riots of 1736; Kenilworth was set in Elizabethan England, Quentin Durward in 15th-century France and The Talisman in Palestine during the Crusades.
In tribute to his continuing influence, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was founded 16 years ago by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, with the winners announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in June.
Previous winners include Hilary Mantel, Robert Harris, Robin Robertson and Tan Twan Eng, and this year's shortlist features novels set in Sicily in 412 BC, the 19th-century American frontier and England in the winter of 1962–3.
As a genre, the historical novel appears to be thriving, its perennial success directly attributable to the Laird of Abbotsford.
Scott's literary career had begun first as a collector of Border Ballads – Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border – and then with epic poems such as Marmion and The Lady of the Lake.
Only in his forties did he turn to fiction.
Learning of his change of direction, Jane Austen wrote: "Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones.
"It is not fair.
"He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths.
Sir Walter Scott's home in Abbotsford (Image: free) "I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it – but I fear I must."
Scott's fame crossed continents.
Eager to see the locations he so vividly described, tourists flocked to Scotland to visit the scenes of his stories and explore his stately home, which was opened to the public in 1833, the year after his death.
His evocation of bygone times turned a country once deemed primitive and inhospitable into the alluring backdrop for drama, intrigue and heroism.
Thanks to the appeal of his swashbuckling plots and unforgettable characters, and to the romance surrounding the author himself, Scott put Scotland on the map.
A natural storyteller, whose grasp of social and political history was profound and enlightened, Scott's impact on literature was transformational.
Across Europe and America, writers took their cue from him, notably Balzac, Alessandro Manzoni, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, James Fennimore Cooper, Theodor Fontane, Pushkin, Tolstoy and Turgenev, all of whom acknowledged their debt.
Not everyone, however, was a fan.
Mark Twain believed his novels exerted a "malign" influence on "the character of the Southerner".
By diverting Southerners' attention from the present and future to an idealised past, wrote a frothing Twain, he helped foment the American Civil War.
Until the present era, familiarity with Scott's novels was essential for anyone who wished to be considered well-read.
To admit never having broached The Heart of Midlothian or Ivanhoe (Tony Blair's desert island book) was to invite derision.
Today, sadly, Scott is barely read in his home country.
Whereas there have been recent translations of his work in Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Catalonia, here he has become the Great Unread.
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People wouldn't thank you for a set of his novels; I doubt if even charity shops would accept them.
But although his stories are consigned to library bookshelves, where they gather dust, his legacy endures.
The rocket-like Scott Monument in Princes Street is within earshot of the tannoy system at Waverley Station.
What other city has named its main railway station after a novel?
And all across the UK streets, houses and pubs are called after his books or characters: Marmion Road, Durward Avenue, Waverley Place, Ivanhoe Avenue, Woodstock Road, Peveril Street, Kenilworth Terrace...
It is one of literature's great injustices that a writer whose purpose was to bring history alive for as wide an audience as possible is now deemed dry and dull.
Neither accusation is fair.
Scott has fallen from favour not because of changing taste, although that plays a part; nor because he is now as historic as his subjects, although that too is true.
It is not because of his rich, occasionally antique language, or his love of dialect, or his leisurely digressions.
The biggest enemy of Scott is time itself—not its passing but readers' lack of it.
Modern bestsellers are written to catch the attention quickly and not overstay their welcome.
It's a brave writer who produces a novel as long as Peveril of the Peak.
But for some of us, the heft of Scott's stories is part of their appeal.
In fact, right now I'm off to continue Rob Roy, which had me hooked from the opening page.
I may be some time.
The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction shortlist: The Heart in Winter, Kevin Barry; The Mare, Angharad Hampshire; The Book of Days, Francesca Kay; Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon; The Land in Winter, Andrew Miller; The Safekeep, Yael van der Wouden.
The winner will be announced on Thursday 12 May at 5pm.
For details and tickets go to:
