ABSTRACT
Scott's use of the historical sources for each novel is analysed by editors, often in considerable detail, in the Historical Note and sometimes the 'Genesis' section of the Essay on the Text. Scott was widely travelled in Great Britain, and each of his novels has a distinguishing geographical setting. Scott's appreciation of the materiality of books has evoked a pleasurable response in many of his original readers. The early decades of the nineteenth century were a period of 'intense bookishness' among the literate classes. Much of the Abbotsford library was assembled between the first appearance of Thomas Frognall Dibdin's The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness in 1809 and his Bibliophobia. Most of his original readers have enjoyed the strange names of authors and titles of volumes mentioned in the Waverley Novels, while fellow-bibliophiles or bibliomaniacs have ticked off the details in their own mental lists of books acquired or desired.
