Walter Bower (or Bowmaker; c. 1385 – 24 December 1449) was a Scottish canon regular and abbot of Inchcolm Abbey in the Firth of Forth, who is noted as a chronicler of his era.

This work, undertaken in 1440 by desire of a neighbour, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth Castle, was a continuation of the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of John of Fordun.

The completed work, in its original form, consisted of sixteen books, of which the first five and a portion of the sixth (to 1163) are Fordun's — or mainly his, for Bower added to them in places.

In the later books, down to the reign of Robert I (1371), he was aided by Fordun's Gesta Annalia, but from that point to the close the work is original and of contemporary importance, especially for James I, with whose death it ends.

[5] In the two remaining years of Bower's life he was engaged on a reduction or "abridgment" of this work, which is known as the Book of Cupar, and is preserved in the Advocates Library, Edinburgh (MS. 35.

Other abridgments, not by Bower, were made about the same time, one about 1450 (perhaps by Patrick Russell, a Carthusian monk of Perth), also preserved in the Advocates' library (MS. 35.