# What is the best 19th-century Scottish novel?

> Historical epics share shelf space with Gothic chillers, pirate yarns and quiet village chronicles, all from a century when Edinburgh shaped what the world read.

*By YPB Team · Published October 28, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-19th-century-scottish-novel*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde** — score 1000/1000
   Stevenson's 1886 novella of a respectable doctor and his monstrous alter ego.
2. **Guy Mannering** — score 942/1000
   Scott's 1815 novel of a lost heir, smugglers and the gypsy prophetess Meg Merrilies.
3. **A Study in Scarlet** — score 668/1000
   Edinburgh-born Arthur Conan Doyle's 1887 novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.
4. **Kenilworth** — score 668/1000
   Scott's 1821 Elizabethan tragedy built around the mysterious death of Amy Robsart.
5. **Treasure Island** — score 668/1000
   Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 pirate adventure that gave the world Long John Silver and treasure maps.
6. **The Heart of Mid-Lothian** — score 565/1000
   Scott's 1818 novel of Jeanie Deans walking to London to plead for her condemned sister's life.
7. **Redgauntlet** — score 565/1000
   Scott's 1824 novel of a fictional third Jacobite plot, partly told through letters.
8. **Old Mortality** — score 565/1000
   Scott's 1816 tale of the Covenanter uprising of 1679, praised for its even-handed portrait of both sides.
9. **Phantastes** — score 565/1000
   George MacDonald's 1858 dreamlike faerie romance that later inspired C. S. Lewis and Tolkien.
10. **Kidnapped** — score 565/1000
   Stevenson's 1886 adventure of young David Balfour and the Jacobite Alan Breck across the Highlands.
11. **Annals of the Parish** — score 565/1000
   John Galt's 1821 chronicle of fifty years in an Ayrshire village, told by its kindly minister.
12. **Rob Roy** — score 439/1000
   Scott's 1817 novel set around the Highland outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor on the eve of the 1715 rising.
13. **The Antiquary** — score 439/1000
   Scott's 1816 comic novel about a crusty collector of relics, said to be the author's own favourite.
14. **The Little Minister** — score 439/1000
   J. M. Barrie's 1891 bestseller about a young Scottish minister who falls for a mysterious gypsy girl.
15. **Waverley** — score 439/1000
   Walter Scott's 1814 debut novel about the 1745 Jacobite rising, often called the first historical novel.
16. **The Bride of Lammermoor** — score 0/1000
   Scott's 1819 Gothic tragedy of doomed lovers that inspired Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor.
17. **The Master of Ballantrae** — score 0/1000
   Stevenson's 1889 dark tale of two brothers torn apart by the Jacobite rising and a lifelong feud.
18. **Ivanhoe** — score 0/1000
   Scott's 1819 medieval romance of Saxons, Normans and Robin Hood that became a worldwide sensation.
19. **Confessions of a Justified Sinner** — score 0/1000
   James Hogg's 1824 psychological thriller about a fanatic and his sinister double, far ahead of its time.

Tags: books, classics, scotland, fiction, 19th century