Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge by Frederick BarnardIn the eighteenth century historical fiction was a familiar genre predominantly in France but soon to move over to England as well in the form of translations. It was, however, often considered a slightly...
Drawing of Edward Waverleyfrom Sir Walter Scott’sWaverley books. The Jacobite rising of 1745 was one of the last in a series of rebellions aimed at returning the descendants of the House of Stuart to the throne. Although for a while Charles Edward Stuart...
Waverley is not a book ‘merely for amusement’ as Sir Walter Scott himself tells us but one designed to make the story ‘intelligible’, through a knowledge and learning of past events, culture and politics. Thus Scott begs pardon for ‘plaguing them [his readers] so...
Sir Walter Scott (painted 1822) by Henry RaeburnIt has been said that the famous nineteenth century German historian Leopold von Ranke first turned to the study of history through reading the novels of Sir Walter Scott (see McGarry, White, 1963, p. 17). Therefore...
