Considered to be one of the greatest of the British Romantic era novelists, Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, the son of Walter Scott the lawyer, and Anne Rutherford. Scott’s literary interests began at an early age and ranged from Scottish history and folk ballads to the fashionable romanticism of Germany.
In 1805, Scott produced the immensely popular Lay of the Last Minstrel. It was, said critic George Saintsbury, with the exception of the Wordsworth and Coleridge lyrical ballads, “the first book published which was distinctly and originally characteristic of the new poetry of the nineteenth century.” He followed the Minstrel with Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rokeby (1813), and The Bridal of Triermain (1813).
