The Heart of Mid-Lothian

It is an incredible book. Despite the difficulties of Scott's use of the Scots' dialect and heavy interlardings of fine points of history, it well rewards the reading. And those get easier as you go along and get used to them. In the Scott monument in Edinburgh the main character, Jeanie Deans, is mentioned as one of his best and it is very true. Not only is she a strong, quietly righteous woman of the lower classes, her actions are inspiring and moving. On a par with Jane Eyre, and like her one of the first strong independent women in modern literature. she was loosely based on a real historical figure (unless Scott was being sly), but entirely a creation of Scott's and one of, if not his best. I would say she is the true heart of Midlothian (the Scottish county that includes Edinburgh), not the prison which was in the center of town and forms a pivotal plot fulcrum. Highly recommended.

Great

Very interesting story based on historical events.

Excellent waverly classic novel of the modern era. It seems to be a new book. There is only one line written in ink that too is in the first page. Otherwise there is not a single mark in the whole book. Being old, the price of the book is a little higher. The delivery should be more fast in this age of fast communication.

The fact that this monster of a novel was a bestseller at its time (1818) possibly tells us that 'progress' has reduced the time that we are willing to spend on reading. So for me. I was looking for the usual half dozen pocket books to take on a trip of a few days. This one was the last Scott that was still in my shelf. For lack of space I relegate books that I have read and that are not top favorites to either box storage in the garage or to 2nd hand book sales at school charities. This one I had not read yet. I will probably never have the stamina for it, unless I am marooned on the proverbial island and it happens to be in my hand luggage. I did read the introductions and browsed through some chapters. Maybe another time. Possibly never, though I do remember that Scott's mansion Abbotsford near Edinburgh is one of only four writer's houses turned museum that I visited. The other three are Goethe's birth house in Frankfurt, the Joyce museum in Dublin (of which I can't remember for certain right now whether he ever lived there), and Nabokov's childhood appartment in St.Petersburg. I think my Scott time is over, so if you wait for the next instalment of my Melville excursions, don't worry, I am not sidetracked. Redburn will be next, but I am travelling a lot these days, and I don't take hardcovers on trips. Why then do I post a review on the 'Heart'? I was impressed by the editor's story of his trouble with identifying the right text for this publication. The writer, Scott, was a highly literate man in a modern society of his time, who even owned the publishing house himself, indirectly. The book was an international bestseller despite its folksiness and the excessive use of 'dialect' English. Finding out 200 years later which text is 'authoritative' can be damned hard. You see what I am driving at. Text reconstruction is hard and often impossible. How then can a text that was transmitted orally for decades, if not centuries, before it was committed to paper, have an 'authoritative' version that has any plausible relation to its 'author'? The 'Heart' is in a box in the garage now, in case you wondered.