This is volume nine of a projected 30‐volume Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. It conforms to the format of the published volumes. The text of the novel is followed by an extensive essay on the text, an emendation list, a note on end‐of‐line hyphens, a historical note, explanatory notes and a glossary.
The essay on the text, replete with 78 footnotes, covers 45 pages, and has four sections. These deal with the genesis of The Monastery, the composition of the novel, later editions, and the present text.
The Monastery, first published in 1820, is not as popular as “its highly successful predecessor Ivanhoe” (p. 380) and has largely been neglected. Penny Fielding also observes in her essay on the text that it “has a pervasive inter‐textual relationship with much of Scott’s earlier work”, revealing “a development of his interest in Border history”, and it marks “a shift in Scott’s writing career in another very important way”. Scott decided that the “London firm of Longman and Co.” should produce it, rather than “the Edinburgh firm of Constables to manage and oversee the work” ‐ the common arrangement for the other Waverley Novels (pp. 355‐6).
The novel is set just before the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Its location is the monastery of Kennaquhair in the Border country, just about to be dissolved. The fortunes of two brothers and their response to social, religious and political changes preoccupy the narrator. There is a powerful encounter between two people representing the opposing sides of the Reformation polemics who were close friends as students.
When first published, and subsequently, readers were intrigued by the mysterious spectral White Lady who guards a magical mystical Black Book. Sir Piercie Shafton, full of curious linguistic mannerisms, provides comic relief. The novel opens with an exchange between the fictional antiquary Cuthbert Clutterback and the author of Waverley.
Penny Fielding has produced an edition which should be in every library collecting literature in English, and the works of that great genius Sir Walter Scott. Edinburgh University Press has published a firmly bound, clearly typeset, nicely margined volume. It is strongly recommended.
