The Scottish writer and editor, John Gibson Lockhart, published his first full attempt at a biography of his late father-in-law in 1837. This is Volume 2 of a new reprint of that seven Volume edition. These are the years from 1804 to 1812, in which the story of many important personal and literary milestones - including the purchase of land at Abbotsford, partnership with James Ballantyne, work on ‘Marmion’, Dryden and Swift, and the beginning of ‘The Quarterly Review’ - mix with fascinating accounts of domestic and social life, from the politics of The Peninsula War and an ever widening Correspondence to Excursions in England and Scotland.