For almost sixty years, the Jacobites fought to put the exiled Stuart kings back on the British throne. Their story has everything a novelist could want: a lost cause, a romantic prince, Highland clans, spies, divided families and a final, bloody defeat at Culloden in 1746. It is no surprise that the Jacobites have inspired more great novels than almost any other chapter of British history.
This list gathers the best Jacobite historical fiction in the order of the history it covers, from Bonnie Dundee’s rising in 1689 to the long aftermath of Culloden. It mixes the classics of Scott and Stevenson with modern favourites, including the series that made millions of readers fall in love with the Highlands.
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Who Were the Jacobites?
The Jacobites were supporters of King James VII of Scotland and II of England, who lost his throne in 1688, and of his son and grandson after him. Their name comes from Jacobus, the Latin for James. They rose in arms several times, most famously in 1689, 1715 and 1745.
The last and best known rising began when Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, raised his standard at Glenfinnan on 19 August 1745. It ended at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, and the government’s harsh treatment of the Highlands that followed changed Scotland for ever.
For more novels set in Scotland, from Macbeth to the twentieth century, see our Best Scottish Historical Fiction list.
Quick Picks
| If you want | Read |
|---|---|
| Romance, adventure and time travel | Outlander |
| The ’45 from the inside | Dragonfly in Amber |
| A classic chase across the Highlands | Kidnapped |
| The first historical novel | Waverley |
| An old fashioned Jacobite romance | The Flight of the Heron |
| A dual timeline love story | The Winter Sea |
| The 1689 rising | Bonnie Dundee |
| The aftermath of Culloden | Joseph Knight |
The Early Risings, 1689 to 1733
1. Bonnie Dundee by Rosemary Sutcliff (1983)
Setting: Scotland in the 1680s, to the rising of 1689
Hugh Herriot is the orphaned son of a painter, raised by strict Covenanter relatives in Ayrshire. He goes to work for Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse and his wife, Lady Jean, first as a stable lad and later as a galloper carrying messages. Through Hugh’s eyes, we watch Claverhouse become “Bonnie Dundee”, who calls out the Highland clans for King James in 1689.
Sutcliff is best known for her novels of Roman Britain, and this is one of her finest books. It is told by Hugh as an old man looking back, which gives the whole story a warm, bittersweet glow. Claverhouse was hated as “Bloody Clavers” by the Covenanters, and Sutcliff shows both sides of him.
Perfect for: Readers who want the first Jacobite rising, and a great storyteller.
2. The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley (2008)
Setting: Slains Castle, Aberdeenshire, in the present day and in 1708
Carrie McClelland is a novelist who settles near the ruins of Slains Castle to write about the failed Jacobite invasion of 1708, when a French fleet tried to land the young James Stuart in Scotland. As she writes, her story starts to read more like fact than fiction, and she wonders whether she is drawing on the memories of an ancestor.
Kearsley weaves the two timelines together beautifully, and the 1708 love story at its heart is one of the most loved in modern historical romance. It was first published in the UK as Sophia’s Secret, and later editions use The Winter Sea.
Perfect for: Readers who love dual timeline novels.
3. The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray (1852)
Setting: England, the Low Countries and Spain, about 1690 to 1714
Henry Esmond is an orphan, taken in at about the age of ten by Viscount Castlewood and raised in his family’s household. Written as Henry’s own memoir, the novel follows him through Cambridge, war in the Low Countries and Spain, and his long, complicated love for the women of the Castlewood family.
The Jacobite cause runs all through the book, and it builds to a fictional plot to put James Stuart, the Old Pretender, on the throne when Queen Anne dies in 1714. It is a rich portrait of the age of Marlborough and Queen Anne.
Perfect for: Readers who enjoy long Victorian classics.
4. Rob Roy by Walter Scott (1817)
Setting: Northern England and the Highlands, around 1715
Frank Osbaldistone refuses to join his father’s London business and is sent to his uncle’s house in Northumberland, a nest of Jacobite plotting. His scheming cousin Rashleigh takes his place in the firm and soon puts it in danger. Setting things right draws Frank into the Highlands and into the company of the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor.
Scott sets the novel on the eve of the 1715 rising, and the Highland chapters are still thrilling two centuries later. It came out at the end of 1817, with 1818 on the title page.
Perfect for: Readers who want to try Walter Scott at his most exciting.
5. The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley (2013)
Setting: Present day Scotland, Belgium and Russia, and the Jacobite exiles of the 1710s and 1720s
Nicola Marter can sometimes see the past owners of objects she touches, a gift she keeps hidden. When a woman brings her a small wooden carving said to have belonged to Empress Catherine of Russia, Nicola needs to prove where it came from. She turns to Rob McMorran, a man she once left, whose gift is stronger than hers, and together they follow a girl called Anna from Scotland to Belgium and on to St Petersburg.
The Firebird is a sequel to The Winter Sea, following the Jacobites who went into exile after the failed risings. It won the RITA Award in 2014, and it opens up a side of the story most novels leave out.
Perfect for: Readers who finished The Winter Sea and want more.
6. The New Road by Neil Munro (1914)
Setting: The Highlands, 1733
Aeneas Macmaster, a young man from Inveraray, sets out to learn the truth about his father, who is believed to have died at the Battle of Glenshiel in the failed rising of 1719. He travels north with Ninian Campbell along the route of General Wade’s new military road, which is being built to carry soldiers into the heart of the Highlands.
The road is the novel’s great symbol: the modern world, and government power, pushing into the clans’ old country. John Buchan called The New Road “one of the finest romances of our time”, and the BBC adapted it in 1973.
Perfect for: Readers who like a quest, and a forgotten classic.
The Forty Five
7. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (1991)
Setting: Inverness and the Highlands, 1743
Just after the Second World War, former army nurse Claire Randall is on a second honeymoon in the Highlands with her husband Frank. She touches a stone in the ancient circle at Craigh na Dun and wakes in 1743, caught between English Redcoats and the Highland clans, with a Jacobite rising only two years away.
Outlander is the novel that made the Jacobites famous all over again, and the Starz TV series began in 2014. In the UK it was first published as Cross Stitch. Our Outlander reading order lists the whole series, and our Best Time Travel Historical Fiction list has more novels like it.
Perfect for: Readers who want romance and adventure in equal measure.
8. Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon (1992)
Setting: Paris in 1744, and Scotland in 1745 and 1746
The second Outlander novel opens in 1968, when Claire brings her grown daughter Brianna to the Highlands and, with the help of historian Roger Wakefield, sets out to learn what became of Jamie Fraser’s men after Culloden. Then the story goes back to 1744, to Paris, where Claire and Jamie try to stop Charles Stuart from raising French money for his cause.
This is Gabaldon’s Jacobite novel, taking the reader through the glittering court of Louis XV and into the rising itself. It became the second season of the TV series in 2016. See our Diana Gabaldon author page for all of her books.
Perfect for: Outlander readers who want the full story of the ’45.
9. Waverley by Walter Scott (1814)
Setting: Scotland, 1745 to 1746
Edward Waverley is a young English officer posted to Scotland. A visit to his family’s old friend, the Baron Bradwardine, leads him into the Highlands and towards the cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Published anonymously in 1814, Waverley is often called the first historical novel. Scott wrote it “sixty years since” the rising, when there were still people alive who remembered it, and his fair portrait of the Jacobites helped turn them from rebels into romantic heroes.
Perfect for: Readers who want to see where historical fiction began.
10. The Flight of the Heron by D. K. Broster (1925)
Setting: The Highlands, from July 1745
Ewen Cameron of Ardroy, a young Highland chief, learns that Prince Charles Edward Stuart has landed in Scotland. His foster father, who has the second sight, foretells that Ewen will meet a man whose fate is bound up with his, and that a heron will bring them together. Soon afterwards, Ewen ambushes and captures Captain Keith Windham, an officer in the government army.
The friendship between the Highland chief and the English officer is the heart of the novel, and it made The Flight of the Heron one of the best loved Jacobite romances of the twentieth century. It has been adapted for radio and television several times. It is the first book of Broster’s Jacobite trilogy.
Perfect for: Readers who love old fashioned romance and adventure.
11. Midwinter by John Buchan (1923)
Setting: The English Midlands, 1745 to 1746
Alastair Maclean is a Highland Jacobite sent into England to rally the Prince’s supporters as the Jacobite army marches south. On his travels he meets a young, struggling writer called Samuel Johnson. Buchan presents the story as a lost manuscript, covering the months of Johnson’s life that his famous biography leaves out.
Buchan is best known for his spy thrillers, and Midwinter shows him at his most romantic. It is unusual for a Jacobite novel because it is set in England, where the Prince hoped for support that never came.
Perfect for: Readers who like a clever literary adventure.
12. The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson (1889)
Setting: Scotland, France, India and colonial America, 1745 to 1764
In 1745, the two sons of the Laird of Durrisdeer agree to back opposite sides in the rising, so that the family estate is safe whoever wins. A coin toss sends the elder son, the Master, out with the rebels, while his younger brother Henry stays home loyal to King George. The bitter rivalry that follows is told by the family steward, Ephraim Mackellar.
Many families really did split their loyalties this way in 1745. Stevenson turns the idea into his darkest novel, a story of two brothers and the hatred between them.
Perfect for: Readers who like their adventure stories dark.
After Culloden
13. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
Setting: The Lowlands, the Hebrides and the Highlands, 1751
David Balfour is seventeen and an orphan when he goes to ask for help from his miserly uncle Ebenezer. His uncle betrays him, and David is kidnapped aboard a ship bound for the Carolinas. At sea he meets Alan Breck Stewart, a proud Jacobite, and the two are soon on the run across the Highlands together.
Stevenson builds the story around a real crime, the Appin murder, and paints a vivid picture of a Highland country still occupied by soldiers after Culloden. It is one of the great adventure stories, and it has been filmed many times.
Perfect for: Readers of any age who want a classic chase across the Highlands.
14. Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson (1893)
Setting: Edinburgh, the Bass Rock and the Netherlands, from August 1751
The sequel to Kidnapped picks up exactly where the first book ends, with David Balfour in Edinburgh. He sets out to give evidence for James Stewart, known as James of the Glens, who stands accused over the Appin murder. On the way, he meets Catriona Drummond, the daughter of a Highland Jacobite.
Catriona is less of a chase and more of a political thriller and love story, with a sharp eye for how justice was bent against the clans after the rising. In the US it is called David Balfour.
Perfect for: Readers who finished Kidnapped and want to know what happens next.
15. The Gleam in the North by D. K. Broster (1927)
Setting: The Highlands, in the years after Culloden
Ewen Cameron of Ardroy has come home to the Highlands with his wife and young sons, hoping for a quiet life. Then his kinsman, Dr Archibald Cameron, returns from exile to raise money for the Jacobite cause, and government soldiers are determined to arrest him for treason. Ewen is drawn in to protect him.
The second book of Broster’s Jacobite trilogy is built around a real man, Dr Archibald Cameron. It can be read on its own, but it is best after The Flight of the Heron.
Perfect for: Readers who want to know how the cause lived on after 1746.
16. Redgauntlet by Walter Scott (1824)
Setting: Dumfriesshire, the Solway Firth and Cumberland, 1765
The novel opens with letters between two friends. Darsie Latimer, a young orphan, is rambling in Dumfriesshire, while Alan Fairford studies law in Edinburgh. When Darsie is nearly caught by the tide on the Solway sands, he is rescued by a mysterious and imposing stranger.
Redgauntlet imagines a last, secret attempt at a Jacobite rising, twenty years after Culloden. It is Scott’s farewell to the cause, full of old men still loyal to a dream, and it includes “Wandering Willie’s Tale”, one of the best ghost stories in Scottish literature.
Perfect for: Readers who like stories about the end of an era.
17. Joseph Knight by James Robertson (2003)
Setting: Dundee, Edinburgh and Perthshire, 1802, looking back to Jamaica
In 1802, the elderly Sir John Wedderburn hires a Dundee investigator, Archibald Jamieson, to find Joseph Knight. Knight was the enslaved African man Wedderburn brought from his Jamaican plantations to Scotland, who won his freedom in the Scottish courts and then disappeared.
The real Wedderburn family had backed the Jacobites, and after Culloden John fled to Jamaica, where he made his fortune. Robertson uses that history to connect the defeat of 1746 with Scotland’s part in slavery. The novel won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year in 2003.
Perfect for: Readers who want a modern, thoughtful look at the legacy of the ’45.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Jacobite novel?
Outlander and its sequel Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon are the most popular. For a classic, Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson is the best adventure, and Waverley by Walter Scott is the novel that started it all. The Flight of the Heron by D. K. Broster is the best loved old fashioned Jacobite romance.
When were the Jacobite risings?
The main risings were in 1689, 1715 and 1745, with smaller attempts in 1708 and 1719. The 1745 rising, led by Charles Edward Stuart, ended at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, the last pitched battle fought on British soil.
Is Outlander about the Jacobites?
Yes. The first novel is set in 1743, just before the rising, and the second, Dragonfly in Amber, follows Claire and Jamie through the 1745 rising itself, from Paris to Scotland. The later books follow the characters into the years after Culloden.
What are the best novels about Bonnie Prince Charlie?
Waverley by Walter Scott, Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon and The Flight of the Heron by D. K. Broster all show the Prince and his rising. Midwinter by John Buchan follows one of his agents in England during the march south.
Are there novels about the Battle of Culloden?
Several books on this list deal with Culloden and its aftermath. Dragonfly in Amber builds towards the battle, while Kidnapped, Catriona and The Gleam in the North show the Highlands in the years after it, when the clans were disarmed and the old way of life was broken.
Are there novels about the earlier Jacobite risings?
Yes. Bonnie Dundee by Rosemary Sutcliff covers the first rising in 1689, The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley the failed French invasion of 1708, and Rob Roy by Walter Scott is set around the 1715 rising.
What should I read after this list?
For more novels set in Scotland, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, see our Best Scottish Historical Fiction list. Outlander readers will find the whole series in our Outlander reading order, and more novels like it on our Best Time Travel Historical Fiction list.