This 1932 biography may be a bit of a period piece and lack the bulk of Lockhart or the solid critical apparatus of more recent scholarly efforts, but it is still well worth a look. Buchan gives us a brisk, readable account of Scott's life, interspersed with straightforward critiques of the individual works. Although Scott is clearly a great hero of his, this isn't an uncritical account. Buchan does a fairly plausible job of unravelling Scott's business dealings with the Ballantynes and Constable, and makes it clear that in his view Scott brought the financial crisis of 1826 upon himself.

Buchan's own career and background had a lot in common with Scott's: They were both descended from Border families, though born elsewhere (Scott in Edinburgh, Buchan in Fife). Both would have liked to be men of action, but were frustrated by circumstances; both became lawyers and held (minor) public office; both were slightly embarrassed by the talent they discovered for making money by writing adventure stories, and both had ambitions to set themselves up as country gentlemen on the proceeds. Scott was the better writer, of course, while Buchan seems to have been a more careful political and financial operator. Successful as Buchan was, he was never an international celebrity like Scott, of course. Even if Buchan is too modest to make explicit comparisons, there are plenty of little reminders of the parallels. You could almost read the Scott biography as a preliminary sketch for Buchan's autobiography, Memory hold-the-door.

At the very least, the similarities between the two do mean that we should pay attention to Buchan's insights into the motivation for Scott to make what he knew were risky investments, and to borrow against future earnings to build Abbottsford. Buchan sees this as an inseparable part of Scott's creative side: in the same way that he was driven to tell stories, he needed to fulfil a fantasy of himself as laird and patron. It is certainly interesting that Buchan seems to pay more attention to Scott's fantastic, playful side than to his conservatism and dogged industry - perhaps Buchan was conscious that he himself had to struggle more to bring out that playful side.

What we don't get, and perhaps wouldn't expect, is very much about Scott's emotional life or his relations with his wife and children. The relationship with Lockhart is the only one that Buchan devotes more than a few lines to. We also don't get more than a very cursory examination of Scott's influence on later writers (oddly, there's more on his influence on Dumas and Victor Hugo than on Thackeray and RLS) or the critical reception of his work. Buchan's analysis of the poems and novels is very interesting as one craftsman looking with professional eyes on the work of another - he can spot the clever tricks and the defects in the workmanship - but it doesn't really attempt to justify to a contemporary reader why one should still read Scott. Possibly he feels that this would be preaching to the converted. ( )