Waverley, Walter Scott's first successful novel, concerns Edward Waverley, the scion of a noble, landed family in England. He's a Romantic young man, in the formal sense of belonging to the Romantic movement and in temperament--the relative ease of his life and his passionate dilettantishness land him, eventually, in the service of the Jacobites during the rebellion of 1745. He discovers the wild landscapes of the Scottish Highlands, the curious manners of the Highland folk, and learns that life and war are not exactly like all those romantic books about adventure and glory he loves to read.

Scott's book can be interpreted as a critique of the Romantic temperament, and I think the book succeeds best when it contrasts reality with the puffed-up imaginings of Edward Waverley's literature-addled perception. He is not quite Don Quixote, according to Scott, but he suffers from a milder version of the same disease; the most amusing parts of the book center around Waverley's naivete toward battle, ceremony, and love. He is feckless, to be sure, and abysmally undisciplined--but he is a decent fellow in the end, and learns from his mistakes. The people that populate Scott's novel are generally civilized, noble, and upright people, even the fierce rebels; while Scott doesn't approve of rebellion, the rebels are portrayed as misguided at worst, and of equal nobility to the English at best. Scott's purpose was to peer into the world "sixty years since" his own time, and helped give birth to the historical novel. It has confusing and near-unreadable parts (especially when the pedantic Baron shows up), but as a historical novel, it certainly sets the template for all other books of its type to come.

With Waverly, Sir Walter Scott virtually invented the historical novel. The story is based around mostly fictional characters that participate in the Jacobite uprising in 1745 in Scotland. It's also the story of friendships, courage, divided loyalties and of course love. Edward Waverly, the hero gets unwittingly caught up and swept along in a marvelous drama in which he comes of age. As the book progressed I also found myself getting more caught up in the novel and its characters. For me, that's the mark of a very good book.

Both the author and editor's notes were very helpful and I used them often.

Enjoy!

The first several chapters were a bit slow. But once Edward Waverley goes to Scotland, the story picks up. I enjoyed Scott's romantic portrayal of Scotland and, as someone who's not much of a student of history, I also liked learning a little about the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. But most enjoyable was watching the maturation of Edward Waverley. He begins his adventures as a young dreamer whose passivity and romantic notions allow him to be swept into the Jacobite uprising on the side of the rebels. But adversity teaches Edward a sense of responsibility and the value of a realistic outlook. The ending of the novel is almost too neat and satisfying, but through it Scott reconciles the novel's divisions - romanticism and realism, Scotsman and Englishman and the old world, so attractive to Scott but which was speedily disappearing, with the new world and the stability and order it represents.

An excellent book that explodes some of the myths about Scotland. it features the things that Scots should rightly be famous for and aren't, and similarly the things that we are famous for and shouldn't be (including inventing the kilt!).

The book takes us through a number of things, Macbeth, the kilt, tartan, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Scottish enlightenment and a load of other stuff in short easy to read chapters that are pretty self-contained. You can easily read a whole chapter in a single sitting, even if you are a slow reader. The style is very engaging and I finished this book faster than I would normally have done because I alwasy wanted to read one more chapter before I put it down.

Don't miss it.

The author makes a good case that the Stone of Destiny that England returned to Scotland in 1996 (basically a doomed effort by Prime Minister John Major to cadge Scottish votes) is not the genuine article. The author is unable to posit where the real thing might be, though there is no lack of differing ideas. I tend to agree that the stone every monarch of England, Great Britain, and the U.K. was crowned on for seven centuries is phoney baloney, and I even guardedly agree that the Irish people might be a lost tribe of Israel, as Gerber suggests (anyone wonder where the Ark of the Covenant might be? When was the last time anyone took a sonogram under the high hill at Tara?). Some of the references will be too obscure for those who don't already know something about Scottish history, but a general audience might appreciate most of the book.

I found this book to be a disappointingly sparse and sometimes unintelligible history of St. Andrews and its caddies. The author unfortunately presumes that the reader is intimately familiar with both the golf course layout and the native language of it's caddies. Consequently there are no helpful maps or diagrams included and frequent referral to the glossary is an awkward but necessary expedient to reach a degree of understanding. Sadly under this burden the folksy stories lost their charm. To maximize your pleasure, I recommend that you keep a " wee nip" at your side during the reading of this very short work.

don't expect much entertainment or insight from this book. how much lore of dead caddies from the 19th century can you stand?

This book contains everthing form boring truth to hilarious comedy. There is more of the later making this a documentary book that you can't pass up.