1816: Walter Scott - A Very Good Year

In 1816, Walter Scott was incredibly popular with the reading public, although as yet publicly unacknowledged as the author of the works they were reading. He published three novels in that year and one travel book.

His personal life was somewhat less easy. His last but one sibling, Major John Scott, died, leaving Walter as his heir. Scott's difficulties with publishers and printers were heating up, the difficulties that would later drive him to financial ruin and destroy his health, but that was in the future. In 1816 he published:

The Antiquary, the third and last novel in the Waverley series. Scott did not acknowledge his authorship until 1827

The Black Dwarf Volume I of Tales of My Landlord

Old Mortality Volumes II, III and IV of Tales of My Landlord, originally intended to only be Volume II

Paul's Letters to His Kinsfolk written after Scott's first trip abroad, to the site of the battle of Waterloo. It was published anonymously, but Scott was recognized as the author. It purports to be a series of letters written home by someone on the same sort of trip, describing the battle, the site, some first hand accounts, the aftermath and background on the combatants.
Later in life Scott would write his Life of Napoleon Buonaparte.

The Antiquary by Walter Scott
first published 1816

The Antiquary may be a surprise to those who think of Scott as a writer of adventure stories. There is action here, and drama too, but at heart it is a domestic novel.

The antiquary of the title is Jonathan Oldenbuck, a sixty year old bachelor devoted to his studies and determined to find evidence for Roman settlements in his small community on the northeast coast of Scotland. Oldbuck, as he was known locally, lived comfortably with his sister and orphaned niece, but yearned for more scholarly companionship.

One day, travelling home from Edinburgh, he found himself in the company of a young man, Mr Lovel, travelling to Oldbuck's local town of Fairport. Lovel was obviously an educated gentleman. Not only that, he was deferential and kind to the older man. The two struck up an acquaintance, with Lovel often visiting Oldbuck's home at Monkbarns. On one topic though Lovel maintained absolute silence. He would say nothing of his origins. It remained a high and doubtful question, what a well-informed young man, without friends, connexions, or employment of any kind, could have to do as a resident of Fairport. The Sheriff called on him just in case he was a French spy, but although his apprehensions were put to rest, the town was none the wiser.

While much is unknown to individual characters in this novel, in the person of Edie Ochiltree, Scott has created a wonderful source of community knowledge and at the same time given himself an opportunity to use humour and language to counteract the more Gothic tendencies of other parts of his novel. Edie is based on an old order of beggars, the Blue Gowns, for whom the laws against begging did not apply. In Scott's own words in his introduction, he gave Edie "something of poetical character and personal dignity". Roaming freely, without a home, fed in kitchens all over the countryside, Edie knew much of local goings on from the trivial to the truly consequential. He was an excellent judge of character. As reticent in his own way as Lovel, he chose carefully what information he would give to whom. His belief that he was as good as anyone did not allow him to suffer fools lightly, and this is the source of much of the humour.

While The Antiquary may at times seem like a quiet novel, meandering through everyday life, at its heart is the question of legitimacy. On the lighter side, there are the questions about the bits and pieces the locals bring to Oldbuck, pitching them as relics from another time. More seriously, there is the question of land ownership; of lands lost through the vagaries of history and church politics. There is the question of family origins and legitimacy of birth. The novel is set in 1794, and there are echoes of the old Catholic and Jacobite classes in their last opposition to the emerging middle class Protestants, posing the nationalist question of which side is right.

Lastly, there is the question of the legitimacy of the state. The Antiquary was written in 1816. The spectres of the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise and fall were still on people's minds. Some of the fears around the instability in Europe during the 1790s are played out offstage in the novel. The Battle of Waterloo, an episode which fascinated Scott, had just been won when Scott was writing, and the threat of war and invasion was felt to have been put to rest.

This was Scott's third novel and his favourite. Although he claimed Oldbuck was based on a friend, he is in many ways Scott himself. Just consider Oldbuck's home of Monkbarns and Scott's home of Abbotsford. This Oxford edition is from Scott's 1829 Magnum Opus edition, and in common with others in the series has the full set of footnotes, introduction and glossaries. If you've read other of Scott's works, this is an interesting side of him. He did not acknowledge his authorship of the novel until 1827.

This is a great review, thanks. And thank you also for the comments on the edition, that is just the kind I'm looking for.

>3 MissWatson: Oxford World Classics seems to be gradually publishing Scott's works over the last few years. There have been different editors for different titles, but the supplementary material has been excellent in each. I hope you can pick some up.

>4 SassyLassy: The mail is a bit slow, so I'm holding off until after my holiday, but then!

Agree with >3 MissWatson:, just the sort of review I prefer: more premise than plot summary, some background on the book and author, as well as the edition you read. This is not a familiar Scott novel, it's good to learn of it.