ABSTRACT

In 1823, Walter Scott masterminded an effort to establish an Edinburgh antiquarian society known as the Bannatyne Club. The Club's specific purpose, Scott writes to a prospective member, is "to rescue from the chance of destruction, the documents most essential to the history and literature of Scotland". Readers of Scott's historical novels have tended to implicate him in this more circumscribed practice of history. The Jonathan Oldbuck—Edie Ochiltree character pairing merits further attention not only because it helps sort out Scott's historiographical critique, but also because, finally, it points us toward Scott's solution for the limitations imposed by the emergent discipline of professional history. Scott may privilege readerly interpretation over writerly authority, but to suggest that Scott wants his readers to engage in the practice of history for themselves is to make a qualitatively different kind of claim. Scott provides his readers with the raw materials they need to make sense of history for themselves.