Despite his prolific output as a novelist, poet, biographer, historian and anthologist, Scott only embarked on his literary career in early middle age. In the face of constant ill-health, and financial and domestic troubles, he combined the life of a best-selling and influential author with that of a lawyer, landowner, Border farmer, part-time soldier and paterfamilias. A.N. Wilson makes clear that Scott's genius, humaneness and qualities of stoicism and sympathy were as apparent in his life as in his work. Few writers can have been so likeable and unpretentious, and Scott has always been a popular subject with biographers. Wilson looks back through the indifference which has surrounded Scott in recent times, and the distortions of his Victorian idolaters, to recapture the freshness of Scott as he appeared to his contemporaries. Walter Scott's influence was felt not only in the field of literature, but also in the worlds of art, architecture, opera and domestic manners, and by figures as diverse as Byron and Queen Victoria, Dickens and Donizetti, Pugin and Victor Hugo.