Old Mortality

Old Mortality (1816), which many consider the finest of Scott's Waverley novels, is a swift-moving historical romance that places an anachronistically liberal hero against the forces of fanaticism in seventeenth-century Scotland, in the period infamous as the `killing time'. Its central character, Henry Morton, joins the rebels in order to fight Scotland's royalist oppressors, little as he shares the Covenanters' extreme religious beliefs. He is torn between his love for a royalist's granddaughter and his loyalty to his downtrodden countrymen.As well as being a tale of divided loyalties, the novel is a crucial document in the cultural history of modern Scotland. Scott, himself a supporter of the union between Scotland and England, was trying to exorcise the violent past of a country uncomfortably coming to terms with its status as part of a modern United Kingdom. This novel is in itself a significant political document, in which Scott can be seen to be attempting to create a new centralist Scottish historiography, which is not the political consensus of his own time, the seventeenth century, or today. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product details

• Authors: Peter Davidson, Sir Walter Scott, Walter Scott, Jane Stevenson
• Assisted by: Peter Davidson (Editor), Peter (Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature Davidson (Editor), Davidson Peter (Editor), Jane Stevenson (Editor), Jane (Lecturer in Late Antique and Early Medieval History Stevenson (Editor), Stevenson Jane (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press Trade
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 01.05.2009
• EAN: 9780199555307
• ISBN: 978-0-19-955530-7
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 196 mm x 26 mm
• Series: World's classics; World's classics; Oxford World's Classics; World's classics
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Historical romance, English, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, Classic fiction: general and literary