SOURCE: Introduction to The History of Sir George Ellison, The University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. ix–xlii.

In the following essay, Rizzo provides an overview of Scott's life and literary career, suggesting that her personal history is essential to understanding Scott's works.

Sarah Robinson Scott was born to many advantages of education and upbringing that made her a writer, but if she had not needed the money, she would scarcely have turned out the nine books (at least) that made her a professional author.

In 1712 her father, Matthew Robinson (1694–1778), of Edgeley and West Layton Hall in Yorkshire and of a younger branch of a respectable Yorkshire family, married Elizabeth Drake (c. 1693–1746), a Kentish heiress, daughter of Councillor Robert Drake of Cambridge. Together they produced twelve children of whom seven sons and two daughters survived. In Yorkshire were baptized Matthew (1713), Thomas (1714), probably Morris (c. 1715), Robert (1717), Elizabeth (1718), and Sarah (1721); at...