Waverley Novels

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The Waverley Novels are a long series of books by Sir Walter Scott. For nearly a century they were among the most popular and widely-read novels in all of Europe. Because he did not publicly acknowledge authorship until 1827, they take their name from Waverley (1814), which was the first. The later books bore the words "by the author of Waverley" on their title pages.

More loosely, the term is used to refer to all of his novels. The Tales of my Landlord series was not advertised as "by the author of Waverley" and thus is not always included in this list.

Title Published Main setting Period
Waverley, or, Tis Sixty Years Since 1814 Perthshire (Scotland) 1745-1746
Guy Mannering, or, The Astrologer 1815 Galloway (Scotland) 1760-5, 1781-2
The Antiquary 1816 Angus (Scotland) 1790s
Tales of My Landlord, 1st series:
   The Black Dwarf 1816 Scottish Borders 1707
   The Tale of Old Mortality 1816 Southern Scotland 1679-89
Rob Roy 1818 Loch Lomond and environs (Scotland) 1715-16
Tales of my Landlord, 2nd series:
   The Heart of Midlothian 1818 Edinburgh and Richmond, London 1736
Tales of my Landlord, 3rd series:
   The Bride of Lammermoor 1819 East Lothian (Scotland) 1709-11
   A Legend of Montrose 1819 Scottish Highlands 1644-5
Ivanhoe 1819 Yorkshire and Leicestershire (England) 1194
The Monastery 1820 Scottish Borders 1547-57
The Abbot 1820 Various in Scotland 1567-8
Kenilworth 1821 Southern England 1575
The Pirate 1822 Shetland and Orkney late 17th century
The Fortunes of Nigel 1822 London and Greenwich (England) 1616-18
Peveril of the Peak 1822 Derbyshire, the Isle of Man, and London 1658-80
Quentin Durward 1823 Tours and Péronne (France)
Liège (Wallonia/Belgium)		 1468
St. Ronan's Well 1824 Southern Scotland 1800s
Redgauntlet 1824 Southern Scotland, and Cumberland (England) 1766
Tales of the Crusaders:
   The Betrothed 1825 Wales, and Gloucester (England) 1187-92
   The Talisman 1825 Syria 1191
Woodstock, or, The Cavalier 1826 Woodstock and Windsor (England)
Brussels, in the Spanish Netherlands		 1652
Chronicles of the Canongate, 2nd series:[1]
   St Valentine's Day, or, The Fair Maid of Perth 1828 Perthshire (Scotland) 1396
Anne of Geierstein, or, The Maiden in the Mist 1829 Switzerland and Eastern France 1474-77
Tales of my Landlord, 4th series:
  Count Robert of Paris 1831 Constantinople and Scutari (now in Turkey) 1097
  Castle Dangerous 1831 Kirkcudbrightshire (Scotland) 1307

Contents

[edit] Chronological order

  • 1097: Count Robert of Paris
  • 1187-94: The Betrothed, The Talisman, Ivanhoe
  • 1307: Castle Dangerous
  • 1396: The Fair Maid of Perth
  • 1468-77: Quentin Durward, Anne of Geierstein
  • 1547-75: The Monastery, The Abbot, Kenilworth
  • 1616-18: The Fortunes of Nigel
  • 1644-89: A Legend of Montrose, Woodstock, Peveril of the Peak, The Tale of Old Mortality, The Pirate
  • 1700-99: The Black Dwarf, The Bride of Lammermoor, Rob Roy, Heart of Midlothian, Waverley, Guy Mannering, Redgauntlet, The Antiquary
  • 1800s: St. Ronan's Well

[edit] Editions

The two definitive editions are the 48-volume set published between 1829 and 1833 by Robert Cadell (the "Magnum Opus"), based on previous editions, with new introductions and appendices by Scott, and the 30-volume set, based on manuscripts, published by the Edinburgh University Press and Columbia University Press in the 1990s.

Some of the early editions were lavishly illustrated by George Cattermole.

[edit] Placenames

The village of Waverly, Tioga County, New York, takes its name from these novels, as does Waverley Station in Edinburgh.

[edit] Other uses of names

Many British railway locomotives were given names from the novels.

Over two thousand streets in Britain have names from titles of individual novels, with 650 from "Waverley" alone.[2]

[edit] Notes and References

  1. ^ The first series of Chronicles of the Canongate comprised several short stories.
  2. ^ Streetmap.co.uk[1]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

  • A typically enthusiastic essay on the Waverley Novels, published in 1912