The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations Mary Brunton, Susan Ferrier and Christian Johnstone

The Novels of Walter Scott and his Literary Relations is an innovative critical study which challenges traditional approaches by examining Scott only after reading Brunton, Ferrier and Johnstone. Consequently, their lively wit and controversial ideas emerge from their novels unfettered by their purported subservience to the Great Unknown. Questions like desire, the heroine, and the love-plot, are therefore cast in a new, more human light. Attention is then switched to Scott. Will our views of the Waverley Novels undergo a minor or major change? Of particular interest are the accounts of the hero, the heroine, and, above all, that fundamental subject of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British culture: the union. This book claims that this fundamental concept is far more rickety than previously thought, and Scott, right from the beginning of his novelistic career, a much more pensative author than previously acknowledged.

ANDREW MONNICKENDAM is a professor of English at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. His major research interests are the literature of war and the Scottish novel. Together with his colleague, Aránzazu Usandizaga, he edited Back to Peace: Reconciliation and Retribution in the Postwar Period, a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2008. He has published widely on Scottish literature, including the first modern edition of Christian Johnstone's Clan-Albin.

AcknowledgementsIntroduction Mary Brunton: from the Soul of the Baroque to Tron Church Susan Ferrier and the Lucre-banished Clans Christian Isobel Johnstone: from Centrifugal to Centripetal Question Time Notes Bibliography Index