10/09/2026
Professor Katherine Sutherland’s lecture, “Waverley and the Problem of History”, explored how Walter Scott presents the relationship between history, memory and the experience of change.
https://www.walterscottclub.com/blog/waverley-and-the-problem-of-history
Published in 1814 but subtitled "‘Tis Sixty Years Since", "Waverley" looks back to the Jacobite rising of 1745 through the perspective of a young English outsider. Waverley’s fascination with Highland culture risks turning a period of political upheaval, violence and dispossession into a romantic adventure.
The lecture also considered the idea of “progress”. The transformation of the Highlands after 1745 brought economic and political change, but also the destruction of communities and traditional ways of life. Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, provided an interesting alternative perspective through his observations of the Highlands in the early nineteenth century.
One of the most striking themes was the danger of reducing history to the experiences of a single protagonist. Waverley survives and moves on, while many of those caught up in the events of 1745 do not. Scott’s mixture of historical sources, stories, songs and competing perspectives allows readers to look beyond the apparent narrative and ask whose history is being represented.
The lecture also raised a thought-provoking question that remains relevant today: what is presented as the solution may turn out to have been the problem.
Rather than simply celebrating Scott’s historical vision, Sutherland encouraged us to read Waverley critically — and to consider how our own understanding of the past changes with time.
