Old Mortality

Perhaps the finest and certainly the most readable of Scott's Waverley novels, Old Mortality is a swift-moving historical romance that pits an anachronistically liberal hero against the forces of fanaticism in seventeenth-century Scotland--the period notorious as "the killing time." Its central character, Henry Morton, finds himself torn between his love for a royalist's granddaughter and his loyalty to his oppressed countrymen. This edition of Old Mortality is based on Scott's own marked-up text, only recently rediscovered. As well as being an exciting tale of intrigue and adventure, this novel is also a significant political document in which Scott attempts to create a new Scottish historiography.