ABSTRACT
Georg Lukacs's essay on Scott in The Historical Novel seems likely to remain the classic revaluation of the Waverley Novels – partly because of the sheer size of the claim Lukacs makes for Scott. In the forty years which have elapsed since The Historical Novel was written, however, Scott's achievement has come to seem a good deal more comprehensible in terms of his era, though no less remarkable. Lukac's objection to this kind of scholarship supposedly stems from his 'materialist' perspective: it is, according to him, wrong to separate the rise of the historical novel from changes in society taking place in the late eighteenth century – most notably the French Revolution. With the French Revolution 'out of the way', it is tempting to seek a cause for the rise both of 'philosophical' history and of the historical novel in the peculiar circumstances of Scottish society in the eighteenth century.
