Six years before he died and the year he started to pull his life out of the problems that accompanied his unfortunate bankruptcy, Walter Scott published Woodstock. The book has come to mark the beginning of the third phase of the so-called Waverley novels, the first of which, Waverley itself, was published in 1814. Ivanhoe was the first of phase two and came out in 1820.
While Woodstock is not regarded as one of his most successful works, it nevertheless, one hundred years on from his death in 1832, provided the inspiration for the naming a new development in St Budeaux. Ivanhoe (Road) and Waverley (Road) are each remembered in similar way, paying homage to the celebrated Scottish novelist and poet born in Edinburgh in 1771.
An unexceptional student at school and university he joined his father’s office as a law clerk and was working as an advocate by the time he was 21. Four years later his first publication was produced, a rhymed version of Burger’s ballads. In the years that followed he established an impressive reputation as a master of the ballad form, either with new works or adapting that of others. He also became very wealthy and as his ambitions expanded so too did his financial headaches. Dogged by illness in his final years he died at Abbotsford after returning from a tour of the Mediterranean in a government frigate.
