Engraving of Manor Valley by R. Brandard after C. Stanfield

Call Number - 0030665 Shelf Mark - Corson P.559 Depicts Manor Valley, Scottish Borders, with bridge and ruined tower. In the Introduction to Magnum Opus edition of The Black Dwarf (1830), Walter Scott recounts the tale of David Ritchie, the inspiration for the eponymous character: 'Tired at length of being the object of shouts, laughter, and derision, David Ritchie resolved, like a deer hunted from the herd, to retreat to some wilderness... He settled himself, with this view, upon a patch of wild moorland at the bottom of a bank on the farm of Woodhouse, in the sequestered vale of the small river Manor, in Peeblesshire.' Scott himself visited Ritchie's cottage while staying with his friend Captain Adam Ferguson in Peeblesshire in 1797. The original steel engraving was made for the Abbotsford Edition of the Waverley Novels (1842-1847).