The Fortunes of Nigel

The Fortunes of Nigel is a historical novel by the Scottish author Walter Scott, published on May 29, 1822 under the signature “by the author of Waverley, Kenilworth, etc. ”

The story takes place under the reign of Jacques I, around 1620. A young Scottish nobleman arrives in London to try to recover the amount of a loan that his father once granted to the king. The reader immerses himself in the mazes of a big city where swarm colorful creatures, including a good number of the king, the courtiers, the rich bourgeois, the small shopkeepers, the apprentices, the boatmen and up to with the worst rascals of the Whitefriars bottomlands…

If the backdrop is historic, the book is not centered on an event of national importance as are most of Walter Scott’s novels. But the author suggests that a bloody civil war will start twenty years the central theme of the book is that of the noble haughty, inconsistent, always in search of the bourgeois whom he despises, but who will lend him the money necessary for his fredaines.