Scottish · 1771–1832
Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish novelist, poet and lawyer born in Edinburgh in 1771. He first won fame with narrative poems such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion, then turned to prose with Waverley in 1814. Over the next dozen years he published the Waverley novels, including Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, The Heart of Mid-Lothian and Old Mortality, set in periods from medieval England to the Jacobite risings. He shaped the modern historical novel by placing ordinary people among real events and by using Scots dialect in dialogue. He worked as a sheriff and clerk of session, collected ballads, and built the house at Abbotsford. After his publisher collapsed in 1826, he wrote hard to pay off the debts. He died in 1832. His books influenced Balzac, Dumas, Pushkin, Tolstoy and many others.