The Novelist

Macrone describes the great commercial success of Waverley, and comments on Guy Mannering, The Antiquary, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, and The Talisman, giving the highest praise to the last. He then discusses the controversy about the authorship of the Waverley Novels, mocking those who favoured the wrong candidates, and laments that one who earned as much money as Scott should have died in debt.

1771–1797

Macrone recounts Scott's family background, his law studies, and his marriage, with a reminiscence of Scott as a boy supplied by an anonymous schoolfriend.

Eulogy

Macrone describes Scott's customary attire and appearance, praises his character (which he compares favourably to those of Byron and Burns), discusses his friendship with Hogg and Allan Cunningham, and ends the book with expressions of gratitude to his readers and admiration for his subject.

1831–2

Macrone describes Scott's final European journey, in which he visited Malta, Naples, Rome, and Venice, but failed to recover his health, and gives a detailed account of his ultimate decline and death, enlivened by anecdotes from William Taylor Money, the English consul at Venice, and Scott's valet, John Nicolson. It is in this chapter, too, that we learn of Macrone's one glimpse of Scott, while he was en route from London to Abbotsford.

Scott At Abbotsford

Macrone recounts anecdotes about Scott's way of life in the country - paying particular attention to his discordant singing voice, his delight in agriculture, and his kindness to other authors - praises Raeburn's portrait and Chantrey's bust of Scott, and gives an enthusiastic description of the Abbotsford library.

1797–1815

Macrone discusses Scott's collection of ballads for Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and the tour of Waterloo which preceded the publication of Paul's Letters to His Kinfolk. He also describes the beginnings of Scott's friendship with Byron.

The Afterglow of Abbotsford: John Macrone, Celebrity Culture, and Commemoration

In this essay, Gillian Hughes describes the efforts of Scott's family to control his posthumous image by the publication of Lockhart's authorised life and the reissue of Scott's poems and novels. She situates Macrone's work in the context of its composition, when Scott, even in death, dominated the Anglophone literary world, a subject of unique fascination to readers and writers alike.

Macrone at Abbotsford and Innerleithen in 1832

Macrone describes his first sight of Abbotsford in 1832, while he was visiting Hogg at Innerleithen, and records his conversations with an old shepherd who admired the Waverley Novels, and with Scott's friend, Mrs Grant of Laggan.

Introduction

In 1832, John Macrone, junior partner in the publishing firm of Cochrane & Macrone, wrote a life of his idol, Sir Walter Scott. The book was suppressed when Hogg's Anecdotes of Scott, which were commissioned for inclusion in it, met with Lockhart's displeasure, and Macrone moved on to found his own firm in 1833. His authors included Dickens, Thackeray, Moore, and Egerton Brydges, but his thriving business was cut short by his premature death.

Miscellaneous Traits and Anecdotes

Macrone discusses Scott's politics, his failure as a playwright, the ease with which he dictated his novels, his remarkable memory, the modesty with which he regarded his work, his disdain for critics, his dog Maida, his friendship with Joanna Baillie and Archibald Constable, the personality of Lady Scott (with a previously unrecorded story about her supplied by Hogg), and Scott's unfavourable opinions of James Fenimore Cooper and the French Revolution of 1830.