Redgauntlet (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Scott, Walter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140436553 ISBN 13: 9780140436556

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2001

Synopsis

Set in the mid-eighteenth century in the fictitious third Jacobite rebellion, Redgauntlet (1824) tells of Darsie Latimer, a student of law who becomes embroiled in a plot to put Prince Charles Edward (aka, Bonnie Prince Charlie) on the British throne. The events in Redgauntlet never actually took place, but they are probable, and form the culmination of Scott's series of Jacobite novels.

About this title

About the Author

Sir Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771. Educated for the law, he obtained the office of sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire in 1799 and in 1806 the office of clerk of session, a post whose duties he fulfilled for some twenty-five years. His lifelong interest in Scottish antiquity and the ballads which recorded Scottish history led him to try his hand at narrative poems of adventure and action. The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the Lake (1810) made his reputation as one of the leading poets of his time. A novel, Waverley, which he had begun in 1805, was published anonymously in 1814. Subsequent novels appeared with the note “by the author of Waverley”; hence his novels often are called collectively “the Waverley novels.” Some of the most famous of these are Old Mortality (1816), Rob Roy (1817), Ivanhoe (1819), Kenilworth (1821), and Quentin Durward (1823). In recognition of his literary work Scott was made a baronet in 1819. During his last years he held various official positions and published biographies, editions of Swift and Dryden, tales, lyric poetry, and various studies of history and antiquity. He died in 1832.

Review

Yet another triumph in this marvellous series. Here are six English-language novels which I think great and which I do come back to. They all pass an essential test: that with each reading you find something new in them, and so they never exhaust what they have to say ... Redgauntlet, a warm and wonderfully relaxed novel celebrating, among other things, friendship, is also a penetrating psychological study of attachment to a lost cause. -- Allan Massie Yet another triumph in this marvellous series. Here are six English-language novels which I think great and which I do come back to. They all pass an essential test: that with each reading you find something new in them, and so they never exhaust what they have to say ... Redgauntlet, a warm and wonderfully relaxed novel celebrating, among other things, friendship, is also a penetrating psychological study of attachment to a lost cause.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0140436553
• ISBN 13: 9780140436556
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Wood G. A. M., Hewitt David