Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, first published in 1815, was Walter Scott's second novel. Guy Mannering only half-believes in his art, but does believe in the ability of his patriarchal power, wealth and social position to sort out social confusion. However he has to learn the limits of a nabob's authority in a society that (in the 1780s) is no longer a single hierarchy but has many subsets, each with its own laws, gypsies, smugglers, Edinburgh lawyers, the Border store farmer, the traditional landowner. Guy Mannering is set at the time of the American Revolution, and represents a Scotland...

'It will be a grand book for thae Englishers for they winna understand a word of it, ' Hogg's boast to William Blackwood. Witty, humorous and comical as the title implies, the eccentric nature of many of the poems collected here nevertheless belies the often serious and moral issues contained within. Newly available in paperback, and including many of Hogg's better known longer pieces, the present volume is based on the first edition of A Queer Book to be published since 1832 - though the similarity between the two editions ends with the running order. While the text for the original edition...

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...