Sir Walter Scott

Buchan vividly and affectionately describes the writer whose novels and poems made him the most popular author of his day. Scott was born in 1771 to a powerful Border family. Buchan is qualified to write with sympathy about his Scottish upbringing, disappointment in love and decline into illness and bankruptcy. His feeling for Scott's novels brings them alive for us and provides a deeper understanding of such major works as Ivanhoe and Waverley.