SOURCE: "Scott, the Short Story, and History: 'The Two Drovers'," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XXI, 1986, pp. 210-25.

In the essay below, Overton explores the implications of the "historical short story" as a genre through a close reading of "The Two Drovers, " summarizing the principal points of criticism of the story and relating them to the historical development of the English short story form.

Sir Walter Scott's distinction as a short story writer has long been appreciated, and it has been marked recently both by reprintings of the stories, including "Wandering Willie's Tale,"¹ and by Walter Allen's placing of Scott as the founder of the modern short story in English.² Yet several questions remain incompletely answered—questions which are important not just for their bearing on Scott but on the development of this new, and essentially modern, form. Most obviously, there is the problem why Scott attempted...