Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is one of the best-loved Scottish writers. Beginning with a series of poetry collections and nonfiction works, Scott quickly became known as a rising force in British letters. But it was with the publication of Waverley (1814), the first of a series of sixteen bestselling historical novels known collectively as the Waverley novels, that the writer established himself as a literary icon. Such works as Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and Kenilworth, among many others, are still widely read today, and have never been out-of-print. S. Fowler Wright here provides a definitive biography of the writer and the man, showing how his antecedents in Scotland colored all of his later work, and following the rapid rise of his reputation--and the simultaneous onset of the financial troubles that plagued his later years.