The Pirate

"The Pirate" is also the title of novels by Harold Robbins and Frederick Marryat The Pirate (published at the end of 1821 with the date 1822) is one of the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, based roughly on the life of John Gow who features as Captain Cleveland. The setting is the southern tip of the main island of Shetland (which Scott visited in 1814), towards the end of the 17th century, with 1689 as the likely date of the main incidents. Composition and sources On 21 August 1820 John Ballantyne offered Archibald Constable a new novel to follow Kenilworth (which was to be published in January the following year). No title or subject was specified at that stage, and it was not until April 1821 that Ballantyne noted that what he calls the 'Buccaneer' had been begun. The need for research on the northern isles, and other occupations, slowed Scott down, and the first volume was not completed until early August, but his pace then quickened and the work was finished in late October. In 1814 Scott had taken a six-week cruise with the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners. He kept a diary (eventually published in his biography by J. G. Lockhart), and when he came to write The Pirate he was able to draw on it for many details about an otherwise unfamiliar part of Scotland. He accumulated a small collection of pirate literature, the most useful being History of the Lives and Actions of the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. To which is added, A Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the most noted Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (1742). This was supplemented by an account of the pirate John Gow supplied by Alexander Peterkin, Sheriff-Substitute of Orkney and Zetland, published in 1822, the year of the novel's appearance, as Notes on Orkney and Zetland. Scott was also acquainted with several books on the northern isles from the seventeenth century to his own time which discussed the agricultural questions that occupy Triptolemus Yellowley's attention in the novel.