The contribution of Scott

The publication of Waverley in 1814 must be reckoned one of the major intellectual events of the nineteenth century. For in this tale of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and in the half dozen novels of Scottish history with which he followed up its huge popular success, Scott developed a model of historical narrative that transformed the writing of fiction and history. Its influence was manifested in three principal ways. First and most important for the present discussion, Waverley and its early successors provided a flexible paradigm for historical romance, enabling other writers both to recognize and present a particular type of historical conflict in terms that seemed at once universal and authentically American or, as the case might be, Russian, Italian, Argentinian. Second, Scott's innovations in Waverley also enlarged the scope of the novel form generally by developing its historical consciousness (its conscience, too, for that matter) and by multiplying the variety of natural and social forces that impinged on its characters' behavior. Finally, his example inspired professional historians to reform their research methods and extend the range of interests and motives surveyed in their accounts of historical causation.

Scott's influence on the development of post-Enlightenment historiography can only be touched on here, but some notice must be taken of the basis of that influence. For the historiographical virtues of Scott's novels are also found in American novels like Satanstoe and The Scarlet Letter.