Old Mortality

By Arnold Wong

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 broadest spectrum 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, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140430989
• ISBN13: 9780140430981
• Release Date: July 1975
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Extremists generate all the excitement. But moderates ultimately prevail.

We all know that Sir Walter Scott invented the historical novel. Some scholars also call him father of the political novel. THE TALE OF OLD MORTALITY (1816) is certainly a political novel. And a religious novel. And an historical novel. And a love story. And a masterpiece of psychological analysis. *** About all that a literate American reader might find a chore is the broad lowland Scots spoken by many of the characters,...

Scott at his best

The tale of Old Mortality is certainly one of the great Waverley novels. Scott was writing about a historical period he knew well and a subject he cared deeply about. The result is a story both exciting and informative, full of romance and action. The novel is set mainly in the year 1679 and concerns the revolt of the strict Presbyterian Covenanters against the Episcopalian forces of Charles II. The hero of the novel, Henry...

An Outstanding Work of Historical Fiction

Scott's "Old Mortality" is set amidst political and religious turmoil in late 17th century Scotland. Covenanters, in that time, a sect of Presbyterians, engaged government forces of both Scotland and Britain in an effort to secure their religious freedoms. In the middle of this action is Henry Morton, a moderate youth, drawn out of his secure life by a chance encounter, and into a ten-year Odyssey of strife and conflict...

Scott's greatest novel, in an authoritative edition.

Old Mortality is Scott's single best novel, without an ounce of fat in its taut, well-paced, and exciting narrative. The language of the characters--all of them, except for the hero and one or two other, fanatics of one type or another--is rich and fascinating, and the window it provides on a crucial moment of British history is indispensible. The Edinburgh edition is exemplary: highly readable yet to the highest standards...