The Fair Maid of Perth

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The Fair Maid of Perth
Author	Sir Walter Scott
Country	Scotland
Language	English, Lowland Scots
Series	Chronicles of the Canongate; Waverley Novels
Genre(s)	Historical novel
Publication date	1828
Media type	Print (Hardback and paperback)
ISBN	N/A

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The Fair Maid of Perth

The Fair Maid of Perth (or, as it less commonly known, St. Valentine's Day) is a novel by Sir Walter Scott. It is set in the 14th Century in Perth and other parts of Scotland. It was first published in May 15, 1828.

The book was originally to have two other stories in the same volume: My Aunt Margaret's Mirror and The Death of the Laird's Jock, and was to have been titled St. Valentine's Eve.^[1]

The Fair Maid's House in Perth

1 Plot summary
2 Historical anomalies
3 Bizet opera
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The "Fair Maid" is Catharine Glover, daughter of a glovemaker in Perth, who kisses Henry Smith, the armorer, while he is sleeping, on Valentine's Day. Smith proposes marriage, and although Catharine refuses at first, she marries him at the end of the book.

There is a parallel plot concerning the romance of David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay, the son of Robert III of Scotland, and Louise the Glee-Maiden.

A bronze statue of a seated Fair Maid in Perth's High Street

[edit] Historical anomalies

In the novel, the death of David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay - which historically took place in 1402 - occurs the night before the Battle of the North Inch; this scene is set in March or April, but the battle occurred in September 1396.

[edit] Bizet opera

La jolie fille de Perth (The Fair Maid of Perth) is an opera in four acts by Georges Bizet (1838–1875), from a libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jules Adenis, after the novel by Sir Walter Scott.^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

v • d • e Works by Walter Scott

Novels:	Waverley (1814) • Guy Mannering (1815) • The Antiquary (1816) • The Black Dwarf (1816) • Old Mortality (1816) • Rob Roy (1817) • The Heart of Midlothian (1818) • The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) • A Legend of Montrose (1819) • Ivanhoe (1819) • The Monastery (1820) • The Abbot (1820) • Kenilworth (1821) • The Pirate (1821) • The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) • Peveril of the Peak (1823) • Quentin Durward (1823) • St. Ronan's Well (1823) • Redgauntlet (1824) • The Betrothed (1825) • The Talisman (1825) • Woodstock (1826) • Chronicles of the Canongate (1827) • The Fair Maid of Perth (1828) • Anne of Geierstein (1829) • Count Robert of Paris (1831) • Castle Dangerous (1831)