Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), educated at the University of Edinburgh and trained as an advocate, spent his youth exploring the Scottish Borders collecting oral minstrelsy. He first achieved international renown with Scottish narrative verse epics like The Lady of the Lake (1810).

In 1814, publishing anonymously as 'The Author of Waverley', Scott released Waverley, setting the Jacobite uprising of 1745 against realistic social history and single-handedly inventing the genre of the historical novel. His subsequent Waverley Novels—including Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, and the medieval epic Ivanhoe (1819)—created a global craze for Scottish culture and tartans. When his publishing house collapsed in the financial panic of 1826, Scott refused bankruptcy, writing heroically until his death at Abbotsford to pay off all debts himself.