Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. He was the first modern English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. Table of Contents: Journal THE JOURNAL OF SIR WALTER SCOTT Letters PAUL'S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK LETTERS OF MALACHI MALAGROWTHER LETTERS ON DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT Various Articles and Essays RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS LIFE AND WORKS OF JOHN HOME LIFE OF KEMBLE — KELLY'S REMINISCENCES SALMONIA ON PLANTING WASTE LANDS ON LANDSCAPE GARDENING TRIAL OF DUNCAN TERIG ALIAS CLERK, AND ALEXANDER BANE MACDONALD BIOGRAPHY: SIR WALTER SCOTT by George Saintsbury SIR WALTER SCOTT by Richard H. Hutton MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT by J. G. Lockhart

John Sutherland's new critical biography is an undertaking of major importance in which he penetrates into the darker areas of Scott's life in a sceptical (yet sympathetic) spirit,

No writer has ever been as famous as Sir Walter Scott once was; and no writer has ever enjoyed such huge acclaim followed by such absolute neglect and outright hostility. But Scotland would not be Scotland except for Scott. All the icons of Scottishness have their roots in Scott's novels, poems, public events and histories. It's a legacy both inspiring and constraining, and just one of the ironies that fuse Scott and Scotland into Scott-land. In this book Stuart Kelly reveals Scott the paradox: the celebrity unknown, the nationalist unionist, the aristocrat loved by communists, the forward-looking reactionary. Part literary study, part biography, part travelogue, part surreptitious autobiography, Scott-land unveils a complex, contradictory man and the complex contradictory country he created. Insightful, accessible, witty and melancholy, this is a 'voyage around my fatherland' like no other.

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This critical biography the indifference which has surrounded Scott in this century and the distortions of his Victorian idolators to recapture the freshness of Scott as he appeared to his contemporaries. By weaving together the life and works, and examining all of Scott's best-known books

It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city's two largest and oldest banks – and its reputation. In the three intervening centuries, Edinburgh became a hothouse of financial innovation, prudent banking, reliable insurance and smart investing. The face of the city changed too as money transformed it from medieval squalor to Georgian elegance. This is the story, not just of the institutions which were respected worldwide, but of the personalities too, such as the two hard-drinking Presbyterian ministers who founded the first actuarially-based pension fund; Sir Walter Scott, who faced financial ruin, but wrote his way out of it; the men who financed American railways and eastern rubber plantations with Scottish money; and Fred Goodwin, notorious CEO of RBS, who took the bank to be the biggest in the world, but crashed and burned in 2008.