Walter Scott's Late Gothic Stories

While ‘Wandering Willie's Tale’, above all of Walter Scott's shorter fictions, has often been included in Gothic anthologies and period surveys, the apparently disposable pieces that appeared The Keepsake for 1829, renegades from novelist's failed Chronicles Canongate series, have received far less attention. Read unlikely context a plush Christmas gift book, ‘My Aunt Margaret's Mirror’ ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ repay an audience familiar with conventions supernatural short story. But to keep readers interested, Author Waverley, writing at end long celebrated career fiction, would need employ some new gimmicks. As we shall see, late stories are not literary cast-offs but recastings finely attuned bespoke word-and-image forum.