Sir walter scott brief biography example
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Abbotsford, Home of Sir Walter Scott |
Sir Walter Scott lived from 15 August to 21 September He can be thought of as the first international literary superstar. As a poet and as a historical novelist, he was popular throughout the world in his day and, to an extent, his books remain read today. He also did much to create the image that many have today of Scotland, and was among the first to popularise parts of it: the Trossachs in particular. The wider picture in Scotland at the time is set out in our Historical Timeline.
Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in , just as the New Town was being developed. His father Walter Scott was a solicitor and his mother Anne was the daughter of professor of medicine. While a child, Scott contracted polio. He was sent to recuperate with his grandparents in the Scottish Borders for a number of years, where he started to acquired his broad knowledge of Scottish folklore, ba
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Walter Scott
Scott's first major Scottish work was his ballad collection, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders, in , for which he spent much time researching and collecting in the Borders, and where he famously met and established a friendship with James Hogg. He followed up the Minstrelsy with a series of hugely popular narrative poems, including The Lay of the gods Minstrel (), Marmion (), The Lady of the Lake (), Rokeby (), and The Lord of the Isles (). With their romantic, often sublime, depictions of landscape, they fuelled the taste for the 'picturesque' and encouraged the trend for the inclusion of Scotland in the 'Grand Tour,' the cultural europeisk tour that enticed much of the travel-minded gentry in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Lady of the Lake contains all the trappings of romance. Set in sixteenth-century Scotland around the border between the Highlands and the Lowlands, it depicts a love story against a background of conflicting communities and cul
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Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott was born on 15 August , in a small third floor flat in College Wynd in Edinburgh’s Old Town. Scott was the ninth child of Anne Rutherford and Walter Scott, a solicitor and member of the private Scottish society known as the Writers of the Signet, so called for their entitlement to use the Scottish King’s seal – known as the signet – when drawing up legal documents.
Whilst the Scott’s home near the University was a popular area for lecturers and professionals like Scott’s father to live, in reality the small, overcrowded alleyway saw little natural light and clean air and suffered from a lack of proper sanitation. Unsurprisingly perhaps then, that six of Anne and Walter’s children died in infancy and the young Walter (or ‘Wattie’ as he was affectionately known) contracted polio as a toddler. Despite early treatment his right leg remained lame for the rest of his life.
In , Walter was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm at Sandyknowe,