Walter Scott and the Bourbon Restorations

Philip Connell, “Walter Scott and the Bourbon Restorations” (pp. 1–37) This essay argues that Walter Scott’s early historical fiction was decisively shaped by the shifting structure of British political argument at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. The first and second Bourbon restorations, in 1814 and 1815, prompted considerable debate in the British press and Parliament, which frequently turned on claimed parallels between contemporary French affairs of state and Britain’s Stuart past. Scott was both an observer of and participant in these debates. His writings from around this period (including Waverley [1814], Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk [1816], and The Antiquary [1816]) suggest his sensitivity to changing public perceptions of the restored Bourbon regime, and a keen awareness of the ways in which the legacy of the Stuarts might be implicated in arguments concerning the future of France.