Outlander author, Diana Gabaldon, said the first “big” book she ever read was an epic chivalric romance by Scots author, Sir Walter Scott.
Gabaldon, 73, said she read Scott’s classic 1819 novel Ivanhoe at the age of just nine.
The book runs to 179,000 words, but took her just three days to finish, she revealed.
The story of a 12th century English knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, is one of Scott’s most influential novels, inspiring film and television adaptations and even operas.
But Gabaldon, whose Outlander books have sold over 50 million copies, admitted she was unaware that Scott – dubbed the father of the historical novel – was Scottish “until much later”.
And she revealed it was another Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, who became one of her writing “role models”.
She said: “I did read Ivanhoe when I was nine – the first ‘big’ novel I’d read, and I was massively impressed that it took me three days.
“On the other hand, it isn’t about Scotland, and I didn’t realise that Sir Walter had anything to do with Scotland until much later.
“I did know, vaguely, about the Waverley novels etc at the time when I started to write what turned into Outlander, but I didn’t feel a strong compulsion to read them, at the time.
“I still don’t have any great desire to read Waverley, though I’ll probably get round to it sooner or later.
“However, I did read every other Scottish novel I could get my hands on. That’s how I developed a sense of what you might call an accessible Scottish accent.”
Gabaldon contributes to a new book, “Outlander and Scotland: Touchstones and Signposts”, in which she reveals her “role models” include novelists Charles Dickens, Dorothy L Sayers, PG Wodehouse and Robert Louis Stevenson.
She added: “Stevenson… taught me a lot about constructing a narrative and how to – and how not to – focus a plot. Also how to do emotion briefly, but strikingly.”
Outlander
Gabaldon wrote her first Outlander novel in 1988 after being inspired by “a man in a kilt” in an old episode of Doctor Who. Her first adventure in the series was published in 1991.
The historical time travel novels have now become one of the bestselling book series of all time, published in over 43 countries and in 39 languages.
Meanwhile, the TV adaptation starring Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe has had the biggest onscreen impact on Scotland’s global image since Mel Gibson’s Oscar winning epic Braveheart in 1995.
Her contribution to Scotland has been compared with that of Scott.
Willy Maley, Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow, has said: “I think she is that important. Walter Scott was a magnificent antiquarian researcher and scholar, and Diana Gabaldon shares those qualities.
“She hadn’t visited Scotland when she started writing Outlander but she is a brilliant researcher… she has immersed herself in the lived culture of the time and it’s quite astonishing.”
Walter Scott
Scott, born in Edinburgh’s Old Town, was an international phenomenon in the 19th century.
He published his first novel, Waverley, anonymously, at the age of 44, becoming the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his own lifetime.
His genius was recognised in the sobriquet “Wizard of the North”.
Ivanhoe, which features jousting knights and courtly passion, became one of Scott’s most influential novels. But unlike earlier tales, it was not set in Scotland but in England in the Middle Ages.
* “Outlander and Scotland: Touchstones and Signposts”, Luath Press, £14.99.
