Waverley
1
Context
In 1829, Scott wrote the General Preface to the Waverley Novels as part of the Magnum
Opus, the definitive version of the Waverley Novels. In it, he describes the composition and
dating of Waverley itself.
It was with some idea of this kind that, about the year 1805, I threw together about one-
third of the first volume of Waverley. It was advertised to be published by the late Mr John
Ballantyne, bookseller in Edinburgh, under the name of 'Waverley, or 'Tis Fifty Years
Since,' a title afterwards altered to ' 'Tis Sixty Years Since,' that the actual date of
publication might be made to correspond with the period in which the scene was laid.
Having proceeded as far, I think, as the Seventh Chapter, I showed my work to a critical
friend, whose opinion was unfavourable..I therefore threw aside the work I had
commenced...this portion of the manuscript was laid aside in the drawers of an old
writing-desk... I happened to want some fishing-tackle for the use of a guest, when it
occurred tome to search the old writing-desk already mentioned...I got access to it with
some difficulty, and in looking for lines and flies the long lost manuscript presented itself. I
immediately set to work to complete it according to my original purpose. And here I must
frankly confess that the mode in which I conducted the story scarcely deserved the
success which the romance afterward attained. (Penguin Classics, 1994:7)
The rest of the novel was apparently finished off in great haste in various stages between
October 1813 and June 1814. It was published on July 7.
This well-known story is, in the words of John Sutherland
2
, 'one of the hoarier creation
myths of nineteenth-century literature...[but one] [t]he reading public have always loved.'(169) It is
a well written story, with the convincing details of the fishing-tackle and the heaps of junk which
cover the manuscript. It was immortalised on canvas by C. Hardie for A & C Black's 'Standard
Edition'. It is also another example of the narrative device whereby someone comes across a lost
manuscript: a device used by MacKenzie or Hawthorne, for example. It is not just readers who
have swallowed this story hook, line and sinker, but also many critics and biographers.
Evidence would indicate that if not false, there are certain inconsistencies in the 1829
account. The most searching investigation has been undertaken by Peter Garside
3
, whose
conclusions we could divide basically into two groups: physical evidence, and interpretative
evidence, that is to say what hard facts there are, and what they imply. Of the hard facts, the
most notable is that the paper on which chapters 5-7 are written (1-4 have been lost) is
watermarked 1805 but it has come to light that significant portions of the manuscript of The Lady
of the Lake are on paper marked 1805, with similar physical characteristics to that in use in the
1
This section draws extensively from http://www.seneca.uab.es/scott/
1
by Andrew
Monnickendam: A hypertextual Approach to Walter Scott’s Waverley. Bellaterra: U.A.B. Servei de
Publicacions, 1998.
2
Sutherland, John. The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995
3
Garside, Peter. "Popular Fiction and National Tale: Hidden Origins of Scott's Waverley.
Nineteenth-Century Literature. Volume 46, June 1991. 30-53
Garside Peter. 'Dating Waverley's Early Chapters.' The Bibliotheck. Volume 13: 1986 : Number
13. 61-81
6
earliest surviving part of Waverley and the Ashtiel "Memoirs" where it resumes (Garside 35). This
would seem to link temporally an area of the novel that has always been taken as forming part of
Scott's initial phase of composition with two works firmly grounded in 1810.
This proposition can only be countered by arguing that either only the first four chapters
were written in 1805, or that Scott used the 1805 paper in 1805, then kept it for another five years
before taking that particular lot of paper out for use again. Both this hypotheses are highly
suspect, if not ludicrous in the second case.
There also claims that Ballantyne informed the publisher John Murray that there was 'a
Scotch novel on the stocks' which was to appear anonymously in 1810. This would presumably
have been Waverley and would belie the 1805 & 1813/4 story of its composition. Scott's reasons
for writing this particular kind of novel at that particular time would be heavily oriented towards
commerce as the larger literary stage, too, was now better set for an entry as a novelist. Maria
Edgeworth's Tales of Fashionable Life (1809) had consolidated a nationwide craze for
idiosyncratic regional 'manners' (Garside 75). Scott, in the 'General Preface' to the Waverley
Novels (1829), describes why he decided to write Waverley after an interlude of several years:
Two circumstances in particular recalled my recollection of the mislaid manuscript. The
first was the extended and well-merited fame of Miss Edgeworth, whose Irish characters
have gone so far to make the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-
hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more toward
completing the Union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been
followed up.
This is unmistakably a political statement suggesting that union can only come about
after greater knowledge and tolerance of other people is achieved. It is logical to assume that
Scott's intention in writing Waverley had the same promulgating aim: to paint a human rather than
a savage Highlander. Maria Edgeworth praises characterisation in her letter of 1814. Her Castle
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