Pirate

Sir Walter Scott, was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet. Many of his works remain classics and include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. Mark Weinstein is Professor of English Literature at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Alison Lumsden is a senior lecturer in the School of Language & Literature at the University of Aberdeen and co-director of the Walter Scott Research Centre. She was for many years research fellow and then General Editor for the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels and has published on several Scottish authors including Robert Louis Stevenson, Nan Shepherd and Louis Grassic Gibbon. She is about to begin work on a scholarly edition of Scott's poetry.

Weinstein and Lumsden have corrected almost 500 readings and misunderstandings ! they have also restored some sixty dialectical words that the original editors had changed to Standard English. For work like this they deserve unstinting praise ... What would Scott say about this new edition? I suspect he would be surprised at how much Weinstein and Lumsden have let him get away with ! and pleased that so many downright errors have been corrected, at long last. The Edinburgh Edition respects Scott the artist by 'restoring' versions of the novels that are not quite what his first readers saw. Indeed, it returns to manuscripts that the printers never handled, as Scott's fiction before 1827 was transcribed before it reached the printshop. Each volume of the Edinburgh edition presents an uncluttered text of one work, followed by an Essay on the Text by the editor of the work, a list of the emendations that have been made to the first edition, explanatory notes and a glossary ! The editorial essays are histories of the respective texts. Some of them are almost 100 pages long; when they are put together they constitute a fascinating and lucid account of Scott's methods of compostion and his financial manoeuvres. This edition is for anyone who takes Scott seriously. Weinstein and Lumsden have corrected almost 500 readings and misunderstandings ! they have also restored some sixty dialectical words that the original editors had changed to Standard English. For work like this they deserve unstinting praise ... What would Scott say about this new edition? I suspect he would be surprised at how much Weinstein and Lumsden have let him get away with ! and pleased that so many downright errors have been corrected, at long last. The Edinburgh Edition respects Scott the artist by 'restoring' versions of the novels that are not quite what his first readers saw. Indeed, it returns to manuscripts that the printers never handled, as Scott's fiction before 1827 was transcribed before it reached the printshop. Each volume of the Edinburgh edition presents an uncluttered text of one work, followed by an Essay on the Text by the editor of the work, a list of the emendations that have been made to the first edition, explanatory notes and a glossary ! The editorial essays are histories of the respective texts. Some of them are almost 100 pages long; when they are put together they constitute a fascinating and lucid account of Scott's methods of compostion and his financial manoeuvres. This edition is for anyone who takes Scott seriously.