Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
The Pirate : Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels - Walter Scott

The Pirate

By: Walter Scott (Editor), Mark Weinstein (Editor), Alison Lumsden (Editor)

Hardcover | 10 April 2001

At a Glance

Hardcover


$273.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $68.44 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

No historical figures appear in The Pirate, and there are no historical events, but it is still an historical novel because it dramatises those ''corners of time'' where an old era is coming to an end, and a new era is beginning. 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.
Scott draws heavily on the diary he kept on his tour round the lighthouses of Scotland in 1814. In both the diary and the novel he weighs the real need to improve the agricultural methods of this barely subsistence economy against the force of tradition and the human cost of rapid change.
The plot hinges on an illicit relationship, and is driven by dark men twisted by their criminality, an obsessed woman searching for her lost son, and the murderous rivalry of two young men - a family tale which illustrates the uses and abuses of traditional lore, as well as Scott''s extraordinary grasp of the literature of the north.
Industry Reviews
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.

Other Editions and Formats

Paperback

Published: 15th April 2019

Paperback

Published: 15th April 2019

More in Literary Studies from 1800 to 1900

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective - Sara Lodge
Jane Austen in 50 Words - Maria Frawley
Moby Dick : Collins Classics - Herman Melville
Keeping Time : Henry David Thoreau's Kalendar - Kristen Case
Flatland : Penguin Science Fiction - Edwin Abbott

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Woman In White : Collins Classics - Wilkie Collins
Pride and Prejudice : Oxford World's Classics - Jane Austen

RRP $15.95

$11.75

26%
OFF
Jane Austen in 50 Words - Maria  Frawley

RRP $90.00

$77.99

13%
OFF
Storyteller : The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson - Leo Damrosch

RRP $51.95

$40.75

22%
OFF
Jane Austen Bingo - Barry Falls

RRP $49.99

$38.75

22%
OFF
Middlemarch : Collins Classics - George Eliot
Emily Dickinson's Poems : As She Preserved Them - Emily Dickinson

RRP $76.95

$56.99

26%
OFF
Mansfield Park : A Novel - Jane Austen

$14.75