I read this book before a trip to Scotland, having read Ivanhoe and Rob Roy previously. It took me a while to get through this book but it was well worth it. Walter Scott has a slow, deliberate style that rewards patience and commitment. I wouldn't be able to read too many of his books but it's a good change of pace and a contrast to modern novels.

It was fun to follow along with the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 through the pages of the book. Scott romanticizes the Highland Jacobites but leaves the reader wondering if their cause really makes sense. The Highlanders are portrayed as both noble and at times illogical. Edward Waverly is mostly just along for the ride and learns about the Highlanders with the reader.

The novel has a satisfying ending.

I had previously read and enjoyed Rob Roy and the Ivanhoe novels by Sir Walter Scott. This was, I suspect, because I could generally follow the plot and the dialogue was interesting if quite archaic throughout the books. However, I had a lot of problems understanding the motives of young Edward Waverley and the frequent use of the Scottish accent and dialect by the Highlanders he later meets. A large amount of the story takes place amongst the Jacobite rebels of 1745 so there are many conversations that require the reader to constantly seek translation from the additional notes at the back of the book, which I was fortunate to have in the edition I read. That and the irritating Baron Bradwardine’s penchant for quoting Latin and French sayings made this novel almost unenjoyable for me. The plot took a long while to become clear, probably about a third of the book, and, even right up until the end of the novel, Edward’s reasons for fighting for the opposite side as a commissioned English officer did not make sense.

Scott attempts to introduce rather thin, romantic and noble notions that float through Waverley’s brain and he is meant to fall for Flora MacIvor who rejects him. But then Edward (too?) quickly shifts his ardour towards an English rose of a previous encounter. I was determined to read Waverley to the end as it is thought to represent the original example of an historical romantic novel. Still, I could not accept in the final few chapters why this example of a fine officer and gentleman was not court martialled for treason. Scott seems to be implying that his behaviour was acceptable purely because of his attitude towards another English officer (his enemy on the battle field!) and this gave him enough status for him to be excused betraying his King and country. It could well be that Scott was attempting to convey the prevailing contemporary attitude of the aristocratic “club” towards their inferiors. I found the conversations with the Young Pretender, the Bonny Prince, much more believable and encouraging of my sympathy for the Stuart cause. Of course all’s well that ends well – at least for the hero of the book. If this had been my first book by Scott it would have put me off reading any more of his novels. It is definitely one for the academics of literature and history.

Scott is a writer much like James Fenimore Cooper, a writer who uses history as a backdrop for romance with historical figures interacting with his fictional creations. Though I find Scott the superior writer of the two, his style can come across as very ponderous to a postmodern ear, especially in his more descriptive passages in the first third of the novel. Waverly to me always seems somewhat tangential to the 1745 events he takes part in. We don't see him doing all that much. I was inspired to learn more about the Pretender and Scottish rebellion, which is a sign that Scott interested me in his subject. Ivanhoe is his better work, in my view. Enjoyable read, but I think the Novel 100 has the wrong work by Scott. Maybe they include it because it was the "first historical novel".

When Waverley was published in 1814, Scott was already famous as the author of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and The Lady of the Lake, as well as his collection of Scottish ballads and a few other poems which were less successful. He had first begun this novel in 1808 but, discouraged by his publisher's lukewarm praise, he laid it aside. By 1813, when he discovered the manuscript in a drawer while rummaging for fishing tackle, his popularity as a poet was declining. Scott took up the work with renewed interest, and shared it once again with his publisher and a few close friends, who were now very enthusiastic. But, still uncertain how the work would be accepted by the public, besides having a rather sly idea that an air of mystery about the author would help boost sales, Scott determined to publish it anonymously. Of course it was a wild success, and many more novels followed in rapid succession, all by the unknown "author of Waverley".

I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the Scottish Highlands and manners, and I love Scott's ability to give his characters such interesting personalities, drawing out all their little eccentricities in a way that just makes you love them all the more!

Just arrived from Israel through BM.

The plot of this book tells the story of Edward Waverley and how he became involved in the famous Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

This book is considered the first true historical novel which inspired many authors, such as Dickens, Trackeray, Stevenson, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Gogol and Tolstoy.

A classical masterpiece written by this Scottish author.

Waverley is my first Walter Scott experience. I've been meaning to read him for a long time now and am glad to have put a step forward in that direction. My choice of Waverley as the first read of Walter Scott is due to the historic time period it was set in. The history and the Scottish setting in this novel are charming, and as his first read, it didn't disappoint me.

I must first give credit to the story, for it was interesting. It tells the story of a young man named Edward Waverley who finds himself embroiled in a political intrigue in the middle of the Jacobite rising. The story is mainly of things that happen to him, the difficulties he faces, and his mind's debate on his loyalty. But the background of the history and the beautiful Scottish setting play an important role adding a lot of colour and weight to the story so as to make the story not only about the adventures of Edward Waverley. However, the flow of the story was painfully slow for me. The first half of the story was more of descriptions and introductions than any active action. I wouldn't say they were completely boring; there were parts that were quite interesting. But, as a whole, there were too many details making inroads into the plot and as such, its flow suffered. The second half picked on the action, yet in parts, the progress was slackened by Scott's obvious love for description. However, other than the speed of its progress, I had no issue with the plot, for I found it quite interesting.

As to Scott's writing, I didn't find it too difficult or too heavy to read. Of course, Scott has made use of a fair amount of Gaelic, but since I listened to those parts rather than me reading it, I didn't find those parts particularly difficult. That is the advantage of using audio along with the text. You can listen to the difficult parts while following the text without labouring to read them.

The characters were interesting and I enjoyed their different character traits. Yet, for some reason, I couldn't fully connect with them. I liked them but from a distance. Edward Waverley, though called the "hero" by the author, was only the center character, and though his character is developed from an idle, ignorant youth to an understanding, responsible man, I found myself enjoying some of the other characters, especially the Scottish Highland chief more than the "hero". The unlooked heroin (if I may say so) took me by surprise but was glad and thankful to Scott for including such a character. It was a fitting tribute to the women of the time to show that even though generally timid and gentle, they could rise to the occasion and show such a strength of character when in need.

Most of the charm of the story was provided by the history of the Jacobite uprise and the beautiful Scottish setting. They complimented the story and increased its enjoyment. Sir Walter Scott seems unsympathetic to the cause, but he has done justice in describing the events without prejudice. I enjoyed the historical background as detailed by him. And as to the beautiful Scottish setting, it made me longing for a visit to the Scottish Highlands. :)

I'm glad to have finally crossed the barrier and stepped into the literary world of Sir Walter Scott. Taking the first step is always an effort. :) Now that I have, I'd like to check out some others in the Waverley series.

I love the leisurely way this book progresses. It was written at a time when books were read aloud around a fire at night, a time long passed. That's what this book is about, a time long passed. With the rise of works like Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, the highlander character and plight after the fall of the lairds has become reinserted into the modern consciousness. For Scott, it was 60 years passed when he wrote this book. For Scott, many a lowlander remembered the time before, even if the character of Scotland had changed dramatically in the interim.

Waverly was a man stuck in the middle. His father was a Whig while his uncle, who raised him as a son, was a Jacobite. He had little understanding of politics and was like a feather in the wind. It was of characters, relationships and benevolence he related to most. His curiosity lead him to explore the Highlands and stay with a chieftain who was generous to him to the point of wishing him to marry his sister. It was through this he became embroiled in the Jacobite cause. It was through meeting Charles Stuart that he took up arms against the Whigish government of the elector king, as he was called at the time by those who had little use for the Germans who took the British throne by rite of the Parliament of the day.

He was saved by his own kindliness toward others. He was no warrior, though he fought. When he saved a soldier beholden to his uncle for the kindnesses that allowed him to win his wife and purchase his commission, that soldier informed him of the state of affairs of both his father and his uncle who were suffering because of his actions. This was more to him than politics. This ended up saving his life in the end.

This small summary lacks the depth of breadth of the work and vision of the times. Written during the age of Enlightenment, it appears written in the same manner... to show that though politics divide and conquer a people, the people are still people and deserve to be treated with respect. That said, his prejudices do show themselves periodically in the work... people of African descent and those who live in poverty were both demeaned in this work, which bothered me because I live in a later age with further Enlightenment than the age in which he dwelt.

I liked the book very much and love Scott's style. I have read a couple others and found him witty as well as a fine story teller. I look forward to reading more.

Foi com esta obra que surgiu o romance histórico. Waverley é o D. Quixote inglês buscando ser um cavaleiro igual a das historias românticas. Novamente é revolução Jacobita o tema central da obra. Fergus e sua irmã Flora são dois patriotas que desejam ver o príncipe Charles Edward no poder. Waverley vê-se envolvida neste luta pela independência. Mas a sua mente apenas pensa nas lendas e no folclore escocês.

Walter Scott descreve com infinita beleza o ambiente campestre da Escócia e as suas clãs. Li pela primeira vez no original o que tornou a leitura ainda mais especial.

i have never read something sooooo dry in my life ❌❌❌❌ nasty get away, I am now free

excellent book — waverley is such an admirable protagonist, and it’s great to see his name plastered all over edinburgh

“‘Down with your plaid, Waverley, we’ll win silks for our tartans before the sun is above the sea.’”

For Scot lit

This is an extraordinary novel. It combines all the pleasures of a well-drawn, emotionally satisfying romance with an immensely sophisticated intellectual-political project. This very combination is, of course, what makes Waverley the first modern historical novel. The relationship of Waverley with Scottish Enlightenment historiography is well-documented. What I was most struck by was how the novel illustrates what JGA Pocock (drawing from Arendt) described as the shift from the “image of human action” to the “image of human behavior” effected by the Scottish Enlightenment–that is the movement from the idea that rather than being freely willed, human history is defined as the behavioral product of material, social, and cultural contexts operating far beyond the power of singular individuals or collective wills. In short, humans are the products of history rather than the agents of it. This historiographical shift was the foundation of the Scottish Enlightenment’s larger political project of vindicating a modern society capable of escaping from the violence of the wars of religion and feudalism by replacing the ideal of independent republican citizen or feudal warrior with that of the polished and civilized member of commercial society, linked to ever-widening spheres of human association by bonds of sympathy and the mutual dependence of the division of labor.

In this historical schema, the Jacobite Rising of 1745 was a last, desperate attempt to overturn this historical progress - a last gasp of political self-assertion by the feudal remnants of the British isles against a rapidly modernizing Scotland and an all-too-civilized England. But as much as Scott displays a romantic sympathy toward the Highlanders, over and over again he shows the Jacobite cause to be a fundamentally absurd enterprise, a historical relic, and over-and-over again he demonstrates how larger historical forces confound his characters’ attempts to politically assert themselves. Scott devotes so much attention to the political, religious, social, and familial contexts of his characters, which in turn makes this book so difficult to approach in 2025, precisely to show the degree to which forces beyond the individual define their field of action and undermine their pretensions to make history. The titular hero’s public actions are rendered so thoroughly ridiculous by the end of the novel that he swears off any political interests or pretensions.

But there is a flip-side to this purpose. Scott undermines the public sphere to exalt the private one. While the characters, and especially Edward Waverley himself, turn out to be politically impotent, their private and domestic actions are hugely consequential to the narrative. And that is in keeping with the larger historiographical/political agenda of the Scottish Enlightenment - that we are to abandon political-religious enthusiasm for the consolations of polite, commercial sociability, which in turn delivers immense dividends of economic growth, cultural enrichment, and political stability. What sets Edward apart from almost all the other characters in the novel is his capacity to extend sympathy to everyone he meets - Scots, English; Jacobite, Whig; Presbyterian, Episcopalian; etc, while others confine their circle of sympathy by party, religion, or clan. In this he is of course displaying a classic kind of Smithian moral sentiment, and it is precisely this capacity that repeatedly delivers Waverley from disaster and secures his ultimate resolution by the end of the novel. Scott’s purposes within this larger political project are obvious then - Waverley shows how private, interpersonal social forces can collectively reconcile the public, political divisions of eighteenth century Britain to produce the unified and modern United Kingdom of the nineteenth century.

However, what truly set Waverley apart for its initial readers and elevated it far above a mere didactic exercise in Scottish historiography was Scott’s addition of force quite foreign to that tradition: that of the imagination. Michael Sonenscher has shown in his book “After Kant” that the early theorists and practitioners of romanticism identified “imagination” as the force that set modern life and art apart from its predecessors - the ability to use the effects of emotion and enthusiasm to cross space and time and turn nature (broadly conceived) into art. Its roots lie in antagonism to the philosophical, cosmopolitan eighteenth century historiography exemplified by the Scots and the search for more authentic forms of human association and sociability than the artificial and refined life of commercial modernity. This quest led to the revival of interest in common folkways, languages, and nations across Europe - Robert Burns’ collection of Scottish folk songs and the Brothers Grimm’s collections of German fairy tales are but two examples of this wider movement. Scott’s illustration of Highland landscapes and life and his wide use of Scots and Gaelic dialogue, song, and poetry which so powerfully captured his readers’ imagination was an obvious product of this intellectual trend. But Scott did not put these resources to stereotypical romantic purposes - his hero does not find an escape from inauthentic modern life in nature or the past. Rather, after seducing the titular hero and the reader with the imaginative power of the Highlands, Scott makes clear the danger of relying on imagination as a political guide and disabuses us of our illusions. There is no alternative to modernity (nor do we actually want one). Yet by the powers of his imagination the sympathetic circle of our (or should I say 19th century Britain’s) modern life has been expanded and enriched by the aesthetic and cultural representation of Highland life, with its political valences neutralized (whereas fear and loathing of the Highlanders had been universal in England and the Lowlands, as many characters in the book make clear). In doing so, Scott created one of his most enduring legacies - the romantic, mythic, and predominantly Highland image of Scotland, an image which would have made the luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment shudder, yet they could take solace that behind the image is a thoroughly modern, peaceful society. And that too is Scott’s legacy.