At the age of 25 he began dabbling in writing, translating works from German, his first publication being rhymed versions of ballads by Gottfried August Bürger in 1796. He then published a three-volume set of collected Scottish ballads,
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This was the first sign from a literary standpoint of his interest in Scottish history.
Scott then became an ardent volunteer in the yeomanry. On one of his "raids" at Gilsland Spa he met Margaret Genevieve Charpentier (or Charpenter), daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France. They married in 1797 and had five children. In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk, based in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk.
In his early married days Scott had a decent living from his earnings at the law, his salary as Sheriff-Depute, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his father's rather meagre estate.
After Scott had founded a printing press, his poetry brought him fame, beginning with
The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805. He published other poems over the next ten years, including the popular
The Lady of the Lake, printed in 1810 and set in the Trossachs. Portions of the German translation of this work were set to music by Franz Schubert. One of these songs,
Ellens dritter Gesang, is popularly labelled as "Schubert's
Ave Maria".
Another work from this period,
Marmion, produced some of his most quoted lines. Canto VI. Stanza 17 reads:
- Yet Clare's sharp questions must I shun,
- Must separate Constance from the nun
- ;Oh! what a tangled web we weave
- ;When first we practise to deceive!
- A Palmer too! No wonder why
- I felt rebuked beneath his eye;
In 1809 Scott became partners with John Ballantyne in a book-selling business and also, as an ardent political conservative, helped to found the Tory
Quarterly Review, a review journal to which he made several anonymous contributions.
In 1813 he was offered the position of Poet Laureate. He declined, and the position went to Robert Southey.