One of Scott's last works, "Reliquiae Trotcosienses" was suppressed by his literary executor and his publisher after his death. This is the first complete edition, although extracts were published in 1889 and 1905. This edition has been edited from the manuscript recently relocated to the library at Abbotsford-the house near Melrose in the Scottish Borders that Scott built for his library and museum. "Reliquiae Trotcosienses (the relics of Trotcosey)" is a guide to Abbotsford and its collections. It illustrates in detail the different ways in which Scott tried to recover the past: through building, collecting, and the multiple acts of narration that invest objects with significance. While simultaneously a work of fiction this book satirizes the impulses of antiquarian collection. Scott did not take himself seriously, as revealed through the learned buffoonery which mocks the kind of activity in which he was engaged as writer and collector.
This is also a personal, elegiac creation, since the narrator, as he approaches death recognises that the house, its artifacts, and above all the writings will live on to mourn their begetter. In essence, they are fragments shored against his ruin.