Set at the end of the 14th century, the background is the intrigue and feuding that plagued the court of Robert III. Catharine Glover, the daughter of a respectable citizen of Perth, is the object of desire not only of the profligate Duke of Rothsay, but also of the young armourer Henry Gow.

Set at the end of the 18th century, this novel observes a small rural community on the east coast of Scotland, whose inhabitants are living under the threat of an imminent French invasion. The antiquary of the title is in many respects a caricature of Scott himself.

Sir Walter Scott's "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft" were his contribution to a series of books, published by John Murray, which appeared between the years 1829 and 1847, and formed a collection of eighty volumes known as "Murray's Family Library." The series was planned to secure a wide diffusion of good literature in cheap five shilling volumes, and Scott's "Letters," written and published in 1830, formed one of the earlier books in the collection.The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had been founded in the autumn of 1826, and Charles Knight, who had then conceived a plan...