50 free Walter Scott trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Sir Walter Scott trivia quiz covers the life and work of the Edinburgh lawyer who invented the modern historical novel and, for a century, was the most-read novelist in Europe. It begins with the man: the childhood polio that left him lame, his one meeting with Robert Burns, the ballad-collecting raids that produced Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, his French-born wife, his beloved dogs and the Borders mansion he built and nearly lost. From there it moves through the poems (The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake) and the Waverley novels: Waverley, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth and the rest, published anonymously as by 'the Author of Waverley'. There are questions on the rediscovery of the Honours of Scotland, the tartan pageant he staged for George IV in 1822, the 1826 crash that left him £130,000 in debt, the operas his books inspired, and the monuments, stations and banknotes that carry his name today. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's articles on Scott, his individual works and his monuments, and each explanation adds one further fact. Ideal for book clubs, Scottish literature students and anyone who has climbed the Scott Monument's 287 steps.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year was Walter Scott born?
1771
He arrived in a third-floor flat on College Wynd in Edinburgh's Old Town, the ninth child of a Writer to the Signet; six of his siblings died in infancy.
Q 02A childhood illness in 1773 left Scott with a lifelong limp. What was it?
Polio
He was sent to his grandparents' Borders farm at Sandyknowe to recover, where his aunt Jenny taught him to read and fed him ballads.
Q 03Which famous Scottish poet did the 15-year-old Scott meet, just once, at an Edinburgh literary salon?
Robert Burns
Scott alone could name the author of a poem Burns asked about, and was thanked for it.
Q 04What was Scott's profession alongside writing?
Lawyer
He served as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire throughout his literary career.
Q 05Scott's wife Charlotte Charpentier was born in which country?
France
They married on Christmas Eve 1797 in Carlisle after a three-week courtship, having met in the Lake District.
Q 06Scott's two-volume 1802 collection of traditional ballads was titled what?
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Of its 48 traditional ballads, 26 had never been printed before; John Leyden helped him gather them.
Q 07Which German writer's poems did Scott translate in 1796 as his first published work?
Gottfried August Bürger
Scott later admitted he had been 'German-mad'; the two poems appeared as The Chase, and William and Helen.
Q 08Scott's first long narrative poem, published in 1805, was called what?
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
He borrowed its irregular four-beat metre from Coleridge's then-unpublished Christabel and it went through five editions in a year.
Q 09Scott's 1808 poem Marmion builds to which battle?
Flodden
Each of its six cantos opens with a verse epistle to one of Scott's friends.
Q 10How many copies did The Lady of the Lake sell in its first year, the peak of Scott's poetic career?
20,000
The poem's disguised king is James V, and it kicked off a tourist boom in the Trossachs.
Q 11On which body of water does Ellen Douglas row out to rescue the lost huntsman in The Lady of the Lake?
Loch Katrine
The huntsman, James Fitz-James, turns out to be the king himself.
Q 12Which poet's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ended Scott's reign as Britain's most popular poet in 1812?
Lord Byron
Scott turned to prose instead, and Waverley appeared two years later.
Q 13What was Scott's first novel, published anonymously in 1814?
Waverley
Its subtitle was 'Tis Sixty Years Since, and it is often called the first historical novel in the Western tradition.
Q 21Scott dictated much of his 1819 tragedy set in the Lammermuir Hills after a near-fatal attack of what?
Gallstones
He had to suspend work in March 1819 and finished the book by dictation about a week into April.
Q 22Ivanhoe broke with Scott's earlier novels by being set where and when?
12th-century England
Relying on printed sources alone, he invented an artificial speech based on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
Q 23Who is the Norman king that Wilfred of Ivanhoe supports, to his Saxon father's fury?
Richard the Lionheart
Cedric of Rotherwood disinherits his son for that loyalty and for loving the Lady Rowena.
Q 14Which historical event forms the backdrop of Scott's first novel?
The Jacobite rising of 1745
Edward Waverley, an English officer, is torn between the Crown and the romantic cause of Charles Edward Stuart.
Q 15Under what byline did most of Scott's later novels appear before he admitted authorship?
By the Author of Waverley
He kept the secret until his financial ruin in 1826, and at least eleven reasons have been suggested for the anonymity.
Q 16How many novels did Scott write in total?
27
Only one, Saint Ronan's Well, has a wholly modern setting; sixteen take place in Scotland.
Q 17Which Scott novel is set in 1715 and narrated by Frank Osbaldistone?
Rob Roy
The Highland outlaw of the title bears little relation to the historical Rob Roy MacGregor.
Q 18The Heart of Mid-Lothian takes its title from which building?
Edinburgh's Old Tolbooth prison
The plot opens with the 1736 Porteous Riots and follows Jeanie Deans's walk to London to save her sister from the gallows.
Q 19In The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Jeanie Deans's sister has been condemned for what?
Murdering her newborn baby
Scott based the story on Helen Walker, whose case reached him in an anonymous letter.
Q 20Which Scott novel became Donizetti's most famous tragic opera in 1835?
The Bride of Lammermoor
Edgar Allan Poe called the novel 'the master novel of Scott', and Donizetti's 1835 opera premiered just after Bellini's death.
Q 24In Ivanhoe, Isaac of York equips the disguised hero for a tournament held where?
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
Prince John presides over the tournament, and Robin of Locksley and his men are in the crowd.
Q 25Which Templar knight is the villain who pursues Rebecca in Ivanhoe?
Brian de Bois-Guilbert
Delacroix painted the abduction of Rebecca in 1846, and the picture hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum.
Q 26Kenilworth (1821) builds up to a lavish reception of Elizabeth I by which nobleman?
The Earl of Leicester
The novel makes Leicester complicit in the death of his wife Amy Robsart, a scandal historians still cannot settle.
Q 27What did Scott and a small military team find in a locked box in Edinburgh Castle on 4 February 1818?
The Scottish crown jewels
The regalia had been hidden from Cromwell, then locked away after the 1707 Union until rumours said they were lost.
Q 28Which monarch's 1822 visit to Scotland did Scott stage-manage as a tartan pageant?
George IV
It was the first visit by a reigning monarch in nearly two centuries, and Scott had only three weeks to organise it.
Q 29Scott was made a baronet in 1820. What happened to the title after his son's death in 1847?
It became extinct
His eldest son had married Jane Jobson, heiress of Lochore, in 1825, but the line ended with him.
Q 30What was the muddy nickname of the farm Scott bought in 1811 and renamed Abbotsford?
Clarty Hole
He named it after a nearby ford used by the monks of Melrose Abbey, then spent more than £25,000 building the mansion.