SIR WALTER SCOTT

A very pleasant humanizing of a 19th century great, this follows the ""halting child"" through his long, busy and good life in a comfortable fashion. The loneliness of a lame child, the tedium of a Calvinist home, the years as a barrister, the growing love of ballads and of versifying, the wide and talented circle of friends were the background for his first success, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and poetry brought him his fame for many years, for he kept his authorship secret when his novels, beginning with Waverley, were published. Several luckless love affairs preceded his happy marriage to Charlotte, many occupations crowded his full days; sickness was a frequent companion; his financial collapse further impaired his health as he drove himself to clear his indebtedness rather than enter bankruptey. And, although his end was long in coming, he continued to write, travel and work and had his wish of dying at his beloved Abbotsford. A full and finely stitched biography, this restores much of the luster due his name.