The Heart of Midlothian: 06 (Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels) - Hardcover

The Edinburgh Edition! aims to rescue these superb works of fiction from an unfortunate history of errors...!A huge project, very scholarly, and altogether very grand indeed! it is perhaps Scott's most profound novel, being a considered meditation on the nature of justice! the novel is, above all, a superb story with a cast of rich characters. -- Harry Reid A part of our immediate response to these exemplary volumes is to feel the discrepancy between Scott's slapdash, hearty, headlong method of composition and the painstaking toil of his editors!the Edinburgh editors have reverted to the first editions, but have also combed the manuscripts for missed readings and lost material; some of the latter, such as the portraits of Edinburgh literati in Guy Mannering, are substantial discoveries. From the outset, readers of this volume will know themselves to be in the hands of learned and accomplished editors. By comparing the first edition of Scott's famous work to the manuscript, the editors of this excellent edition produce 'an ideal first edition'! all serious readers wil find the discussion of Scott's creative method fascinating, especially the case Hewitt and Lumsden make for him as a far more careful writer than scholars have heretofore believed! The present volume offers the modern reader a version very close to that a reader in 1818 would have experienced ... Highly recommended. I recommend the book to admirers of Scott and to those who, like me, have never read his work but always felt they should. The Edinburgh Edition! aims to rescue these superb works of fiction from an unfortunate history of errors...!A huge project, very scholarly, and altogether very grand indeed! it is perhaps Scott's most profound novel, being a considered meditation on the nature of justice! the novel is, above all, a superb story with a cast of rich characters. A part of our immediate response to these exemplary volumes is to feel the discrepancy between Scott's slapdash, hearty, headlong method of composition and the painstaking toil of his editors!the Edinburgh editors have reverted to the first editions, but have also combed the manuscripts for missed readings and lost material; some of the latter, such as the portraits of Edinburgh literati in Guy Mannering, are substantial discoveries. From the outset, readers of this volume will know themselves to be in the hands of learned and accomplished editors. By comparing the first edition of Scott's famous work to the manuscript, the editors of this excellent edition produce 'an ideal first edition'! all serious readers wil find the discussion of Scott's creative method fascinating, especially the case Hewitt and Lumsden make for him as a far more careful writer than scholars have heretofore believed! The present volume offers the modern reader a version very close to that a reader in 1818 would have experienced ... Highly recommended. I recommend the book to admirers of Scott and to those who, like me, have never read his work but always felt they should.

The Heart of Mid-Lothian is precisely focused on the trials for murder of John Porteous and of Effie Deans in 1736 and 1737. Yet it is a chronicle--Scott's only chronicle--which spans the eighty years of the life of David Deans, whose death takes place in 1751. It is the most complex of all Scott's narratives. It is also the most challenging in that it raises in an acute fashion the problem of a judicial system that does not produce justice. Scott places this fundamental issue in its immediate political context, in history as represented by the life of Deans, and alongside the justice of Providence as perceived by his daughter Jeanie, the greatest of Scott's heroines. This edition of The Heart of Mid-Lothian provides a new text established in accordance with the tried policies and practices of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, and in its annotation treats comprehensively the novel's historical, legal, religious and cultural sources.