The Black Dwarf

What It's About

Set in the Scottish Borders in the early 1700s, shortly after the Union of 1707, this short novel centres on a deformed, embittered recluse who lives alone on a remote moor. The local people take him for a supernatural being. His blunt, cryptic interventions touch the lives of Hobbie Elliot, a young farmer whose home is destroyed by a lawless neighbour, and of Isabella Vere, whose father is caught up in a Jacobite plot and intends her for a match she does not want. Scott drew the hermit from a real Peeblesshire recluse, David Ritchie, whom he had met years earlier. The book is generally counted among the lesser Waverley novels, and many readers find its closing chapters hurried, but it has an atmospheric setting and a memorable central figure.

Key Concepts

The novel plays isolation and misanthropy against community loyalty, and it sets rural superstition against more rational explanations for strange events. It also shows how Jacobite intrigue divided Scottish families and neighbours in the years after the Union. The dialogue is written largely in broad Scots, which gives the Border setting its texture but can slow modern readers.

About the Author

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was an Edinburgh-born Scottish novelist, poet and historian who trained as a lawyer. He was one of the most widely read authors of his age and is credited with popularising the historical novel across Europe. He was made a baronet in 1820.