Sir Walter Scott isn't everyone's cup of tea! Yet he does have some admirers on the left..Marxist George Luckas being one!
Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771 and went to the Royal High School and then on to University. After studying law he became an Advocate in 1792 and in 1799 was appointed Sheriff of Selkirk (be became a Clerk of Session in 1806).
Increasingly however he was turning his hand to writing --poetry, ballads, novels. LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL (1805) was an early narrative poem. And WQVERLEY, published anonymously in 1814, was his first novel.
Thereafter Scott had a prodigious literary output. He had to pay for his lifestyle as a border laird based at Abbottsford. Plus Donnachie (2001) notes that he was a partner in Constable and Ballantyne, Edinburgh printers and publishers, who collapsed in 1826. He undertook to repay creditors a debt of £100,000.
Worth a read is ROB ROY (1818) and A LEGEND OF MONTROSE (1819). But his best novel is perhaps REDGAUNTLET (1824) and it has a Jacobite theme exploring as it does tensions and divisions that divided Scotland in 1745!