Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott(1771-1832) was a prolific Scottish writer, considered the inventor of the genre of historical fiction. He originally had a great success with romantic narrative poetry, written in his own name. His biographer Lockhart wrote of his first work in this field, published in 1805: "In the history of British Poetry, nothing had ever equalled the demand for the Lay of the Last Minstrel." [1] He produced further works of this nature until 1817, but in 1812 his fame was eclipsed by the even greater success of Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He took to writing historical fiction, his first novel Waverley appearing anonymously in 1814. Subsequent works were said to be by the Author of Waverley, and were known as the Waverley novels. These were also very successful. The first nine novels, and many thereafter, relate to Scottish history, but from 1819 when Ivanhoe appeared, he started to introduce themes from English history and occasionally from continental history and the crusades.[2]
Mark Twain considered his influence pernicious.[3] According to C. S. Lewis, Scott was the first writer to depict the past as really different from the present.