This talk focuses on Scott's first novel in relation to his career as failed anthology-maker, reprint-tycoon, and canon-builder, and originator of historical fiction. Seminar participants do not need to have read Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since; I'll provide summaries and passages with which we may work. I'm especially interested in Waverley's self-proclaimed identity as an origin -- in this case a new genre -- and in what it means for an author to claim no generic affiliation with his contemporaries or immediate predecessors. I take up these questions in the context of Scott's extremely detailed (and almost entirely fictitious) stories of the novel's inception and composition. This presentation is part of a book project on Romantic collected works and the copyright reforms of 1774 and 1808.