Sir Walter Scott and the Gothic Novel

This monograph considers the relationship of Scott to that series of dark and powerful works that had begun in 1764 with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and, passing through the works of William Beckford, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, were to find their gloomy fulfilment in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer. This study includes a survey of the critical appraisal of Sir Walter Scott in the twentieth century, the influence of the Gothic novel in the nineteenth century, Scott’s relations with the Gothic novelists Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, the origins of Scott’s interest in the marvelous, Gothic influences upon his poetry and novels, and an assessment of Scott’s significance.