He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with his daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory establishment , active in the Highland Society , long time a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh — , and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland — He became a baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh , Scotland, on 22 April ; the title became extinct upon his son's death in Walter Scott was born on 15 August , in a third-floor apartment on College Wynd in the Old Town , Edinburgh, a narrow alleyway leading from the Cowgate to the gates of the old University of Edinburgh.
Walter was, through the Haliburtons, a cousin of the London property developer James Burton d. A childhood bout of polio in left Scott lame, [ 7 ] a condition that would greatly affect his life and writing.
To improve his lameness he was sent in to live in the rural Scottish Borders , at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, by the ruin of Smailholm Tower , the earlier family home. In January , he returned to Edinburgh, and that summer with his aunt Jenny took spa treatment at Bath in Somerset, southern England, where they lived at 6 South Parade. In , Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school and joined his family in their new house, one of the first to be built in George Square.
He was by then well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books. He was given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters. In , his parents, believing he had outgrown his strength, sent him to stay for six months with his aunt Jenny at Kelso in the Scottish Borders: there he attended Kelso Grammar School , where he met James Ballantyne and his brother John , who later became his business partners and printers.
As a result of his early polio infection, Scott had a pronounced limp. He was described in as "tall, well formed except for one ankle and foot which made him walk lamely , neither fat nor thin, with forehead very high, nose short, upper lip long and face rather fleshy, complexion fresh and clear, eyes very blue, shrewd and penetrating, with hair now silvery white".
