130 Years
Annual Essay Competition
Not long after the Club was founded, we set-up an Annual Essay Competition to encourage children to study the works of Sir Walter Scott.
It was an amazing success and within 15 years over 7000 school children were reading the prescribed book and of those almost 5000 submitted an essay into the Competition each year -- and most of these were Primary School Children!
Click on the link below to see some of the questions....
The scheme was such a success than the Club went into debt with the costs of running it and providing the prizes. But, luckily in 1908 an anonymous member donated £1000 which save us from collapse. The Club went into debt again in 1921 so it was decided to stop issuing the Medal as a prize in order to cut costs.
How it worked:
The children were told at the start of the school term which book they had to read. Then before Easter time, under the superintendence of the Headmasters of each school the children would write their Essays. Pupils were expected to answer two questions- one in each section. Three hours were allowed for the Secondary and Higher Grade Schools for the paper (no more than 1000 words), and just two hours for the Primary and Evening Schools (up to 500 words in length).
The Prizes included the Club Medal and a book - usually Lockhart's
Life of Scott, Scott's Poems or copies of
Tales of a Grandfather.
Interest in the competition dropped a little after WW1 but rose back again quite quickly. But, sadly it began to decline from 1924 when the Education Authority said they would no longer provide the books for the children. From 1937 less than two dozen schools took part. In 1949 a new Prize Scheme was announced to make it easier but interest continued to wane. Finally, after almost 70 years the Essay Prize was discontinued in 1965.
Interestingly, Sir Eric Anderson, the former Provost of Eton, admitted at one of the Club's meetings that he would never have gone on to edit Scott's Journal had he not won an Essay Prize as an Edinburgh schoolboy at George Watson's.
We no longer run an Essay Competition.
We did try a couple of times to revive it...but without any major success.
Since 2013 we have awarded a [Scottish Literary Studies Medal]
The Essay Competition Questions:
How do you think you would have got on?
Try a few of the Annual Essay Competition Questions - click on the link below:
