Abstract
The paper is focused on the formation of the Sir Walter Scott's circle - a group of intellectuals, who highly influenced British history in the late 18th and early 19th century. Walter Scott didn't become famous before he was thirty, yet he and his friends (majority of them were - same as Scott - Tory advocates interested in Scottish history and German literature) formed a very unique society in the 1780s and 1790s.
Scott attended many schools during his youth and he met many interesting people there: James and John Ballantyne were Scott's best friends in Kelso, they published their own newspaper and later they founded a publishing house. In Edinburgh, Scott's classmate was Adam Ferguson - son of a famous philosopher Adam Ferguson - and it was in his house where Scott met Robert Burns.
Initially, Scott's circle opposed Whigs and strict Presbyterians, however by the beginning of the 19th century Scott and some of his friends penetrated into Whig literary circles: he got on especially well with the members of the Edinburgh Review. Members of the Scott's circle became leading figures of the Scottish national movement, they also contributed to the most influential journals, and thus they became architects of the late Enlightenment in Scotland.