A Scottish university press has resurrected Sir Walter Scott's last two works, written after he had three strokes and rejected for publication by his family.

The Siege of Malta and the never completed Bizarro were written in 1831 and 1832 as Scott, racked by ill health, struggled to make money to pay his debts. His son-in-law and publisher decided after his death that they should not be made public, The Scotsman reports.

John Buchan, the Scottish writer best known for The Thirty-Nine Steps, read them while researching a Scott biography in the 1930s and agreed they should not be published.

It may be hoped that no literary resurrectionist will ever be guilty of the crime of giving them to the world, he said.

The University of Edinburgh Press is publishing both books in a single volume. Editors have worked from Scott's manuscripts, now in the collection of the New York Public Library, struggling to correct spelling and grammar that had deteriorated because of the strokes.

The Siege of Malta is a mixture of history and fiction about the defense of the island against Muslim invaders while Bizarro is the story of an Italian bandit.

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