Scotch Novels

Summary of the Talk:

Dr Gerard McKeever, lecturer in modern Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh, spoke about Walter Scott’s relationship with Scotland, particularly through the lens of his so-called “Scotch Novels.” His talk was based on an essay he is preparing for publication.

He began by noting how Scott is often seen as inseparably linked with Scottish identity. Statues, monuments, and cultural traditions have reinforced this image since the 19th century. However, McKeever argued that the picture is more complicated: while Scott’s work certainly contributed to ideas of Scottishness, his novels are both more and less “Scottish” than they might at first appear.

Key points from the lecture:

• Scott’s novels were hugely popular across class and gender divides. For example, borrowing records from the Wigton Subscription Library (1828–36) show that 19% of all borrowings were Scott’s works – nearly a fifth of everything read.
• Despite being branded “Scotch novels,” only about 17 of the 27 Waverley novels (63%) are primarily set in Scotland. Many others are set in England, France, or elsewhere but still include significant Scottish characters or themes.
• Scott often portrayed Scots abroad – soldiers, exiles, and fortune seekers – suggesting he saw mobility and diaspora as central to Scottish identity.
• Even in novels set in Scotland, the action frequently crosses borders: characters travel to England, London, or further afield, blurring the sense of a purely Scottish setting.
• Scott’s fiction is strongly regional. He paid close attention to local manners, customs, and landscapes – sometimes more so than to overarching “national” themes. His novels often function at the level of the village, region, or borderland rather than a seamless picture of Scotland as a whole.
• Maps created by later critics trying to “plot” Scott’s novels highlight gaps: large swathes of the Highlands and Western Isles barely appear in his fiction. These areas were instead more present in his poetry, such as The Lord of the Isles (1815).
• Critics such as Georg Lukács and Franco Moretti argued that Scott used historical divisions (Highlands vs. Lowlands, Jacobites vs. Hanoverians) only to reconcile them, thereby supporting the emergence of a unified modern nation. McKeever suggested this is only partly true: the novels are too diverse, and many resist being neatly reduced to national allegories.

Interesting points worth highlighting:

1. Library evidence of popularity: Scott made up nearly one in five borrowed books in Wigton during the late 1820s and 1830s – remarkable proof of his reach.
2. Regional focus vs. national myth: Scott’s detail on local customs and manners shows him as an early “anthropologist” of Scotland, yet this sometimes created caricatures or “othered” groups.
3. Mobility as identity: Many of Scott’s Scottish characters live or act abroad, reflecting how emigration and mobility were integral to Scottish history.
4. Scotland in prose vs. poetry: Scott tended to leave much of the Gaelic West to poetry rather than novels – almost as if novels and poems had different territorial domains.
5. The “Scotch novels” label: Originally used when Scott’s authorship of Waverley was secret, it later stuck as a reductive tag, even when novels were set outside Scotland.

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