The Black Dwarf

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time. Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and... North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. Born in College Wynd in the Old Town of Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a solicitor, Scott survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame. To cure his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Borders region at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower, the earlier family home. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterised much of his work.
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'Tales of my Landlord' is a series of novels by Sir Walter Scott that form a subset of the so-called Waverley Novels. There are four series: Of these, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor have been the most successful, and Old Mortality is considered by modern critics to be among... Scott's best work. The fourth were the least successful. They were so called, because they were supposed to be tales collected from the landlord of the Wallace Inn at Gandercleugh, compiled by a "Peter Pattieson", and edited and sent to the publisher by Jedediah Cleishbotham. This is gone into in great depth in the introduction to The Black Dwarf. The first series was planned to comprise four volumes, each containing a separate novel, but Scott by his own admission botched The Black Dwarf, and Old Mortality came to be three volumes in its own right. . The other three series thus consisted of two volumes each, or just one, in the case of the second. They were supposed to reflect aspects of Scottish regional life.
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