Walter Scott Trivia
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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
Scott was born on 15 August 1771 in a third-floor flat on College Wynd in Edinburgh's Old Town, the ninth child of a Writer to the Signet; six siblings died in infancy.
Q 02Which childhood illness in 1773 left Scott with a lifelong limp?
Polio
The illness was polio, caught at about 18 months; 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
Scott was a lawyer: called to the bar as an advocate in 1792, he served as Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire from 1799 and as a Principal Clerk of Session from 1806.
Q 05Scott's wife Charlotte Charpentier was born in which country?
France
Charlotte Charpentier was born in Lyon, France, in 1770; Scott met her at the spa of Gilsland in Cumberland in 1797 and married her in Carlisle that Christmas Eve.
Q 06Scott's two-volume 1802 collection of traditional ballads was titled what?
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border appeared in two volumes in 1802, printed by James Ballantyne, with a third volume following in 1803; John Leyden helped gather the ballads.
Q 07Which German writer's poems did Scott translate in 1796 as his first published work?
Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger's ballads Lenore and Der wilde Jäger became Scott's anonymous 1796 debut, The Chase, and William and Helen; he later admitted he had been 'German-mad'.
Q 08Scott's first long narrative poem, published in 1805, was called what?
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) took its irregular four-beat metre from Coleridge's then-unpublished Christabel, which Scott had heard recited, and it made his name as a poet.
Q 09Scott's 1808 poem Marmion builds to which battle?
Flodden
Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field climaxes at the 1513 battle where James IV fell; each of its six cantos opens with a verse epistle to one of Scott's friends.
Q 10Which 1813 Scott poem is set in Yorkshire just after the Battle of Marston Moor?
Rokeby
Rokeby (1813) unfolds at Rokeby Park in Yorkshire in 1644, days after Marston Moor; the estate belonged to Scott's friend J. B. S. Morritt.
Q 11On which body of water does Ellen Douglas row out to rescue the lost huntsman in The Lady of the Lake?
Loch Katrine
Ellen Douglas rows her skiff from Ellen's Isle on Loch Katrine, in the Trossachs, to the stranger James Fitz-James, who proves 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
Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) made Byron the sensation of the day; Scott, sensing he had been outshone in verse, turned increasingly to prose fiction.
Q 13What was Scott's first novel, published anonymously in 1814?
Waverley
Waverley came out anonymously in July 1814 and is often called the first historical novel in the Western tradition; Scott had begun it around 1805 and set it aside.
Q 21Scott dictated much of his 1819 tragedy set in the Lammermuir Hills after a near-fatal attack of what?
Gallstones
The attack was gallstones: agonising stomach cramps stopped his pen in March 1819, and he dictated the rest of the novel to John Ballantyne and William Laidlaw by early April.
Q 22Ivanhoe broke with Scott's earlier novels by being set where and when?
12th-century England
Ivanhoe (1819) is set in 12th-century England, in 1194; with no living tradition to draw on, Scott built its dialogue from Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
Q 23Who is the Norman king that Wilfred of Ivanhoe supports, to his Saxon father's fury?
Richard the Lionheart
Q 14Which historical event forms the backdrop of Scott's first novel?
The Jacobite rising of 1745
The Jacobite rising of 1745 is the backdrop: a young 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
Later novels were billed 'By the Author of Waverley'; Scott publicly admitted authorship only at an Edinburgh Theatrical Fund dinner in February 1827, after his financial crash.
Q 16How many novels did Scott write in total?
27
Scott wrote 27 novels in under two decades, from his anonymous 1814 debut to Castle Dangerous, his last, published the year before his death.
Q 17Which Scott novel is set in 1715 and narrated by Frank Osbaldistone?
Rob Roy
Rob Roy (1817) is told by young Frank Osbaldistone, whose journey north entangles him with the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor on the eve of the 1715 Jacobite rising.
Q 18The Heart of Mid-Lothian takes its title from which building?
Edinburgh's Old Tolbooth prison
The 'Heart of Midlothian' was the nickname of 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.
Q 19In The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Jeanie Deans's sister has been condemned for what?
Murdering her newborn baby
Effie Deans is condemned for murdering her newborn baby under a statute that presumed guilt from a concealed pregnancy; Scott based Jeanie on Helen Walker, whose story reached him in an anonymous letter.
Q 20Which Scott novel became Donizetti's most famous tragic opera in 1835?
The Bride of Lammermoor
The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) became Lucia di Lammermoor, which premiered in Naples on 26 September 1835, three days after Bellini's death.
Richard the Lionheart is the king Wilfred followed on crusade; his Saxon father Cedric of Rotherwood disinherits him for that loyalty and for loving the Lady Rowena.
Q 24In Ivanhoe, Isaac of York equips the disguised hero for a tournament held where?
Ashby-de-la-Zouch
The tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, presided over by Prince John, is where the 'Disinherited Knight' wins the day on the horse and armour Isaac of York lent him.
Q 25Which Templar knight is the villain who pursues Rebecca in Ivanhoe?
Brian de Bois-Guilbert
Brian de Bois-Guilbert, the Templar, carries Rebecca off to Templestowe; Delacroix's 1846 painting of the abduction 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 Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, hosts the queen at Kenilworth Castle; the novel makes him complicit in the death of his wife Amy Robsart, which historians have never settled.
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 Scottish crown jewels, the Honours of Scotland, lay in an oak chest in the Castle's Crown Room; hidden from Cromwell's army in 1651, they had been locked away after the 1707 Union.
Q 28Which monarch's 1822 visit to Scotland did Scott stage-manage as a tartan pageant?
George IV
George IV landed at Leith in August 1822, the first visit by a reigning monarch since Charles II in 1651; Scott orchestrated the tartan pageantry in a matter of weeks.
Q 29What became of Scott's 1820 baronetcy after his son's death in 1847?
It became extinct
It became extinct: the 2nd baronet, who had married Jane Jobson, heiress of Lochore, in 1825, died childless on his way home from India in 1847.
Q 30What was the muddy nickname of the farm Scott bought in 1811 and renamed Abbotsford?
Clarty Hole
Clarty Hole, 'clarty' being Scots for muddy, was the farm Scott bought in 1811 and renamed Abbotsford after a nearby ford once used by the monks of Melrose Abbey.