Author Description

Examining all of Scott's best-known books as well as many less familiar works, this critical biography offers a lively and provocative reassessment of the writer who was often considered "the greatest single imaginative genius of the nineteenth century." A.N. Wilson shows how Scott combined his life as a prolific novelist, poet, biographer, historian, and anthologist with that of a lawyer, landowner, border farmer, part-time soldier and paterfamilias. He also discusses the general indifference that has surrounded Scott in this century and reveals the distortions of his Victorian idolators, recapturing the freshness of Scott as he appeared to his contemporaries.