Books in the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels series

INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES FROM THE MAGNUM OPUS WAVERLEY TO A LEGEND OF THE WARS OF MONTROSE Edited by J. H. Alexander with P. D. Garside and Claire Lamont Between 1829 and 1833 the first complete edition of Scott's fiction appeared, in 48 volumes issued one a month, each illustrated with two engravings, and with introductions and notes by Scott himself. The introductions are semi-autobiographical essays in which he muses on his own art and the circumstances which gave rise to each work. His notes illustrate his text, sometimes with simple glosses, sometimes by quotations from historical sources, but most strikingly with further narratives which parallel rather than explain incidents and situations in the fiction. These volumes constitute the first systematic representation of Scott's contributions to his last great edition, the edition which defined the final shape of Scott's fiction for the nineteenth century. They conclude the publication of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, and as they include addenda and corrigenda covering the whole 28 volumes of Scott's fiction in the Edition, they are indispensable to the set. But above all they illustrate the parabolic imagination of the man who made the historical novel an intellectual force. Before their retirement, J. H. Alexander was Reader in English at the University of Aberdeen, P. D. Garside was Professor of Bibliography and Textual Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and Claire Lamont was Professor of English at the University of Newcastle.

Anne of Geierstein (1829) is set in Central Europe in the fifteenth century, but it is a remarkably modern novel, for the central issues are the political instability and violence that arise from the mix of peoples and the fluidity of European boundaries.

The Fair Maid of Perth centres on the merchant classes of Perth in the fourteenth century, and their commitment to the pacific values of trade, in a bloody and brutal era in which no right to life is recognised.

The third of the Waverley Novels is dominated by two old men, Jonathan Oldbuck (the Antiquary of the title) and the beggar Edie Ochiltree.

The Tale of Old Mortality describes the lives - and often violent deaths - the hopes, and the struggles, of the Covenanters in late seventeenth-century Scotland.

In his ever-popular romance of Tudor England, Scott brilliantly recreates all the passion, brutality, verve and vitality of the Elizabethan world.

This edition of Scott's last full novel, the first to have returned to the manuscript and to the many surviving proofs, realises Scott's original intentions.

Chronicles of the Canongate is unique among Scott's works as it is his only collection of shorter fiction.

Against the background of Montrose's campaign of 1644-5, this spirited novel centres on one of Scott's most memorable creations - Sir Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket.

Meg Dods, a sentimental virago, keeps a rundown inn in a derelict Tweedale village, while the young Laird is living way beyond his means. When a nearby spring becomes a Spa, life changes as a hotel and a troop of social climbers move in.

Ivanhoe -- as Scott originally wrote it

A new edition of Scott's longest, and arguably most intriguing, novel.

The Betrothed is set at the time of the Third Crusade (1189--92) and is the first of Scott's Tales of the Crusaders.

The Fortunes of Nigel sits among Walter Scott's richest creations in political insight and range of characterisation. Steeped in Jacobean drama, this tale shows Scott revelling in the linguistic riches of the age.

The novel is set in Orkney and Shetland in 1689, and for the northern isles the 'Glorious Revolution' actually means the beginning of the cultural dominance of Scotland and the advent of English power.

Set in south-west Scotland in the immediate aftermath of the 1707 Union, The Black Dwarf was intended to be a story about the first, abortive, Jacobite uprising of 1708. Instead it developed into a gothic tale of the supernatural.