Illustration for Sir Walter Scott's 'Peveril of the Peak': Peveril and the Dwarf

In 1829 Wilkie agreed to provide sketches to be engraved for Robert Cadell’s Magnum Opus edition of Sir Walter Scott's (1771-1832) Waverley Novels, published between 1829 and 1833. He wrote to Sir Wiliam Knighton on 5 January 1831, ‘The publishers of Sir Walter Scott have again applied to me for a sketch from Peveril of the Peak. Young Peveril, with the dwarf, Sir Jeffery Hudson, is what I have thought of.’ In 1829 he had executed a sketch of Peveril in the Tower.