Scott wrote short stories throughout his career, some included within novels, others published separately in periodicals. This collection of the stories from periodicals extends from his earliest published fiction to his last and comprises pieces from The Edinburgh Annual Register (1811), The Sale-Room (1817), Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1817-1818) and The Keepsake (1828-1831). Only three of these stories have been regularly reprinted; the other five are here made readily available for the first time. Publication in periodicals offered Scott new opportunities to explore the potential of the short story form and to demonstrate his enormous versatility as a writer of fiction.