Excerpt from Redgauntlet
Scott had originally intended to call "Redgauntlet" by another title - to wit, Herries. Several sheets of the book had been printed off, before he would consent to yield to the urgent persuasions of his two publishers, Constable and Ballantyne, and give the novel its present name. That Scott had, must have, a very especial feeling for this book, we know from Lockhart. Indeed, "The Antiquary" perhaps excepted, no other of his stories and romances is so based upon his own personal adventures and experiences.
The year in which it was written and published was the last happy and untroubled year of Scott's career. Abbotsford was visibly growing in splendour under his eyes; his own circle was still unbroken by death or calamity; and if he had partly ceased from the enormous original production of the year before, it was only because he did not wish to "overcrop." The other writings of this year were fewer than those of any year since he began the Waverley novels. It was the year of Lord Byrons death, and among his reviews and prose and verse miscellanies occurs his tribute to his great contemporary's memory, written for Ballantyne's newspaper immediately after the news reached Abbotsford.
This adds a pregnant touch of contemporary history to the period - the eve of Scott's own tragic decline. His chief literary labour of the year, novels apart, was the revising of his Swift for the second edition.
"Redgauntlet" was published in June 1824. Like some of its immediate forerunners, it was received at the time a little coldly. Lockhart throws some light upon this temporary repulse by suggesting that it was in some degree a novel of Jacobite disillusion.
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