Two “lost” works by Sir Walter Scott that were deemed unworthy of publication by his friends and family will be brought out at last, nearly 200 years after his death.

Scott's final manuscripts, The Siege Of Malta and Bizarro, were written in 1831 and 1832 after he had had a succession of strokes and his fragile health was in terminal decline. His frailty brought a marked deterioration in his literary abilities and those who read the manuscripts - notably his publisher, Robert Cadell - believed that they should never see the light of day.

John Buchan scrutinised both in the 1930s while assembling his biography of Scott and remarked: “It may be hoped that no literary resurrectionist will ever be guilty of the crime of giving them to the world.”

Today's Scott aficionados are not so squeamish and welcomed the decision to release the works, despite their appearing to be the works of a writer in decline. Susan Manning, professor of English literature at Edinburgh University, said that they would offer an insight into the powerful psychological urge that drove Scott to write, even as he squared up to death.

“If he had recovered his health, he probably would have published The Siege of Malta, but not in this form. These two works will not enhance his literary reputation, but they are a very moving testimony to the spirit which made him write,” she said.

Both works were written in the period after Scott's life had crashed about his ears. Books such as Waverley and Ivanhoe had established him as a literary success but in 1826 the publishing firm that he part-owned was bankrupted and he resolved to pay off all his creditors using the power of his pen to generate money. Over the next five years he produced a prodigious amount of work before becoming ill.

In summer 1831, for the good of his health, his doctors ordered him to take a tour of the Mediterranean. He travelled to Malta, where he soon devoured the local history and again took up his pen. A quarter of The Siege of Malta had been finished by December and Scott sent the final draft to his publisher from Rome in spring 1832. He died in London later that year. It is a work of historical fiction based on the defence of the island by the Order of St John of Jerusalem against a larger Moorish force.

Bizarro is a fictionalised account of an Italian brigand and Rob Roy figure and is billed as a tale of passion, murder and revenge.

The editors of the new volume had to make several amendments. In an explanatory note, they say: “For all that Scott repeats himself, uses the wrong word and sometimes loses control of the shape of his sentences, there is no mistaking the onward drive of his story. Omission of a word, substitution of another word, reshaping the grammar will usually resolve the problems.”

Scans of Scott's manuscripts are included on a CD-Rom.

The Siege Of Malta and Bizarro are published by Edinburgh University Press, £40

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