Breathes There the Man... From the Lay of the Last Minstrel
by Sir Walter Scott

Scottish novelist, poet, historian, translator and biographer, best known as the author of the historical novel and author of Ivanhoe (1819). His first published works were translations - The Chase and William and Helen (1796), a translation of two ballads by G.A. Bürger, and a translation of Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1799) - and a compendium of border ballads, collected by Scott in three volumes, entitled Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3). These were followed by a narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) and other poetic romances: Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rokeby (1813) and Lord of the Isles (1813). He also published eighteen and twelve volume works of Dryden and Swift in 1808 and 1814 respectively, before the appearance, in 1814, of the first novel Waverley (1814).

This became the first of a trilogy of novels with the subsequent publication of Guy Mannering (1815) and The Antiquary (1816). Four other series of Scottish historical novels followed - The Black Dwarf and Old Mortality (1816); Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian (1818); The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose (1819) - before his taking up of specifically English history in the more famous texts: Ivanhoe (1819), The Monastery and the Abbot (1820), Kenilworth (1821), The Pirate (1822) and The Fortunes of Nigel (1822). Later works include Quentin Durwood (1822), Redgauntlet (1824) and The Talisman (1825).