Waverley

Walter Scott’s first novel, as he originally intended it to be read

This edition of Scott’s Waverley marks the bicentenary of the first publication of the novel. It presents the authoritatively edited text by Peter Garside for the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, together with a new short introduction, making the anonymous novel that enraptured its first audience again readily accessible to readers.

This, the first of the Waverley Novels, burst anonymously upon an astonished world in 1814. Its publication marked the emergence of the modern novel in the western world and was to have an influence on the great European writers of the nineteenth century, including Tolstoy, Balzac and Stendhal.

Edward Waverley is a young, cultured, but impressionable man whose sensibilities lead to his involvement in the Jacobite Rising of 1745. In his journey into Scotland, down to Derby, and back up again he witnesses the cultural and political geography of Great Britain in all its variety and in a state of political crisis. Two hundred years on, it is still an exciting read and relevant to today's issues.