Sir Walter Scott enjoyed a popularity and fame second to no other writer in his lifetime, but is now little read and for many years was not regarded as a serious writer. There have been many biographies of him but, in the last fifty years, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work, particularly in terms of more serious critical appraisal of the historical novel generally. In the case of Scott, it is extremely important to place his work in the historical context of late eighteenth-century Scotland in which he grew up and of the social and political changes which affected the country and by which he was influenced. This book attempts to give a brief account of his life and to chart his development as a poet and novelist, and to justify his claims to attention as a major nineteenth-century novelist and a seminal influence on later writers.