Walter Scott was the most influential novelist in world literature. The sources of his fiction were diverse and included extensive reading in medieval and Renaissance verse romance and detailed memory of English literary classics, especially Shakespeare. His novels may be read as critical responses to his eighteenth-century fore-runners in the novel and to contemporary women writers of "national tales" and "historical romances." His work is informed by a specialist's knowledge of seventeenth-century history and literature, a sound education in Scottish Enlightenment history and sociology, a strong and highly personal reaction to the revolutionary crises of his day, and his experience as a best-selling narrative poet. Scott fashioned the historical novel as a major vehicle for inventing a supposedly "national" culture, history, identity, and destiny that would unite all regions and classes during an age of rapid and often violent change. Accordingly his novels, like his narrative poems, were...