5 stars. This is a beautiful and masterly book. Like all of Scott’s works, I loved it for the characters. Fergus is my favourite <33 then it’s Evan, Edward, and Callum. <3 There was less action in this book than in Scott’s other books—it was quieter in feeling, even if the circumstances were active. There was one long drinking scene, and after that several mentions of drinking/whiskey and some swearing (“good God/heavens” & “devil/deil” and the like, with one or two “d—d,” if I remember correctly). There was also a kiss or two mentioned. It was very humorous in places, but altogether it felt more like a quiet read than most of Scott’s novels. The characters, though, are marvellous. ^_^ Fergus—I love Fergus. And that ending was perfect.

*Due to circumstances, I put this book down at the 53% mark and picked it up again over a week later, so I may have forgotten some content. This review is subject to revision.*

A Favourite Quote: “[I have thrown] the force of my narrative upon the characters and passions of the actors;—those passions common to men in all stages of society, and which have alike agitated the human heart, whether it throbbed under the steel corslet of the fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the eighteenth, or the blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present day.... It is from the great book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions, whether of black-letter, or wire-wove and hot-pressed, that I have venturously essayed to read a chapter to the public.”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: ���[N]o one knew better than Fergus that there must be some decent pretext for a mortal duel. For instance, you may challenge a man for treading on your corn in a crowd, or for pushing you up to the wall, or for taking your seat in the theatre; but the modern code of honour will not permit you to found a quarrel upon your right of compelling a man to continue addresses to a female relative which the fair lady has already refused. So that Fergus was compelled to stomach this supposed affront[.]”

“Under which king, Benvolio? Speak or die!”

Edward Waverly might not be the most complex character, and it seems too cheap to say he is “relatable” because of his flaws. Rather, it might be the case that his youth and zeal for romance make him someone we can at least understand. We’ve many of us longed for heroic (if necessarily doomed) causes. And yet Walter Scott never ridicules him. In fact, he paints him in a compelling light.

Edward Waverly, raised on horseback riding and romance novels, joins the military and does a tour in Scotland, and then falls in with Highlanders while on furlough. Through it all he meets several women, one complicated, one noble, and must navigate the political machinations of the Pretender, rival clans, and the English Army.

Analysis

This book has all the strengths and weaknesses of a Scott novel. There is skilled poetry, intrigue, and complex (and sometimes hilarious) characters. Unfortunately, like many Scott novels, there is a lot of “filler” and it has the feel of being episodic.

Could we call the Waverly novels “Wisdom Literature?” Perhaps. Scott often writes in the 2nd person and makes poignant remarks about the human character.

Further, while Scott ridiculed Presbyterians and Covenanters, he didn’t pull cheap shots. It’s like Flannery O’Connor’s fundamentalist protestants. They are actually quite fun to watch.

The story is interesting, however, and this is definitely one of Scott’s finest.

Well done, Walt, you are very smart and have read many books.

My interest in Sir Walter Scott has primarily to do with my mother who had Scott’s entire complete works and, as I imagine it, read and re-read them time and time again as a young girl in the midst of The Great Depression. So affected was my mom that she wished nothing more than to raise little William Wallaces of her own (as it turned out, I didn’t quite fit the bill, unfortunately).

In their time, as well as in my mom’s, I suppose, Scott’s Waverley novels were considered great escapist fare, historical romances filled with derring-do, sort of a Highlands version of Star Wars. For the 21st century reader, they’re a bit anachronistic, but still a worthwhile read if you’re into British history, as my wife and I are.

I read this aloud to my wife at night, one chapter at a time, sometimes two, over the course of two and a half months. She would usually fall asleep before I finished a chapter, but fortunately the chapters tend to be no more than a few pages and I could easily catch her up before starting again the next night.

It took awhile to acclimate myself to Scott’s writing style. The man was obsessed with commas, and his interest in Scottish dialect led him to write lots of dialogue in an incomprehensible Scottish brogue. I learned to ignore the commas and skim over the Highland dialog (which seemed to add nothing to the story anyway), and in no time the words were tripping off my tongue like water over a dam.

There’s not a whole lot to the story. As a romance, it’s utterly void of suspense. You know who’s going to hook up with who from the get-go. And as a bildungsroman, well, Edward Waverley just isn’t all that interesting either before his adventure or afterwards.

Still, as one of literature’s first historical novels, Waverley is an interesting and worthwhile read. And if you’re a fan of Outlander like my wife, it should be a must-read.

#Re-read

In his first novel, Waverley, Scott travels back to the Scotland and England of the mid-18th century, into which had erupted the second Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. This was the ultimate attempt to refurbish to the British throne the Stuart royal line which had been ejected in the constitutional cataclysm of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Scott reconstructs and explores the profound divisions that the events of 1688 in England, and the preceding religious persecutions in Scotland, had wrought in society.

On the one hand stood those classes represented politically by the Whigs (low-church Anglicans and Nonconformists in England, Presbyterians in Scotland) who had profited from the constitutional settlements of 1688 and 1714 (when the Hanoverian George I had been preferred to the throne on the death of the Stuart Queen Anne) and who had settled into the permanence of the new political regime.

On the other hand stood those groups (Catholics), landed high-church Tories in England, Episcopalians and the still-feudal clans in Scotland) who had remained in unreliable degrees considerate to the cause of the exiled Stuarts and to the social, cultural values that they represented or were felt to symbolize.

This period of history was persuasive for Scott because in it rooted ideological hostility and cultural tension, existing in a state of crisis which threatened to tumble, as it did, into civil war.

At both ends of the gamut, positions were entrenched and embattled, and individuals defined by their positions, such as can be seen today in the way in which the legacy of those same hostilities is still being re-enacted in Northern Ireland.

Writing from the perspective of the 1810s, in a period of British history which had experienced its own threats of revolutionary contention in the wake of the events in France in 1789, Scott could suggest how the modern world was a discernible product of the 1688—tensions, but one where modernity and real progress were founded purposely on the defusing of and retreat from the fanaticism of those earlier, albeit recent, generations.

Here goes the plot:

Edward Waverley is the romantic son of a man who has abandoned the traditional loyalty of his ancestors to serve the newly established Hanoverian King George II, but Waverley himself has been brought up as heir to his Jacobite uncle, Everard Waverley.

Obtaining a commission in the army in 1745, he joins his regiment in Scotland to gratify his father’s wishes, and there, while on leave, visits his uncle’s friend, the baron of Bradwardine, a kind-hearted but doctrinaire Jacobite, and attracts the favourable notice of his gentle daughter, Rose Bradwardine.

He also visits Fergus Mac-Ivor Vich Ian Vohr of Glannaquaich, a young Highland chieftain, active in the Jacobite interest. He falls in love with Flora Mac-Ivor, sister of Fergus.

These visits, indiscreet in an officer of the British army at a time of discriminating political tension, compromise Edward with his colonel. He moreover falls a victim to Jacobite intrigues, finds himself accused of fomenting mutiny in his regiment, and is lastly cashiered and arrested.

Rescued by the action of the devoted Rose, and under the influence of a sense of unjust treatment, Flora’s eagerness, and a rewarding reception by Prince Charles Edward, he joins the Jacobite forces.

At the battle of Prestonpans he has the good fortune to save from death Colonel Talbot, an illustrious English officer and friend of his family, and Colonel Talbot, after the final defeat and dispersion of the Pretender’s Army, secures Edward’s pardon and the rehabilitation of the baron. Meanwhile Edward has been rejected by the spirited Flora, and has turned his affections to Rose, to whom he is consequently married.

Fergus is convicted of high treason and bravely meets his end, and Flora retires to a convent. The romantic adventure ends in death, destruction and the cruel but necessary vengeance of the law.

Accordingly, Edward Waverley asks whether it was meaningful to disturb an established and beneficent government just to replace upon the throne the descendants of a monarch who had willingly forfeited it.

Edward Waverley is a character through whom Scott voices his own view of the condition of Britain at a certain moment in its history. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on the maturing of Waverley’s political understanding.

Despite Scott’s infrequent long-windedness, Waverley’s is an enthusiastically felt and touchingly expressed novel.

According to Sir Ifor Evans, “Scott, though he had some antecedents, including Maria Edgeworth’s picture of Irish life in Castle Rackrent (1800), may be said to have invented the historical novel. Instead of the contemporary scene, and the detailed study of middle-class life, he steps back into the past, frequently using well-known characters, and constructing a narrative which is at once an adventure and a pageant of an earlier world. Where Fielding and Jane Austen had been content with characters and their immediate surroundings, Scott invented a background for his scene, with landscape and nature descriptions, and all the picturesque details of past ages. Though the central theme often introduces the leading personalities, the most secure clement lies in his pictures of ordinary people, particularly the Scottish peasants whom he knew so well, and in whose portrayal his natural gift for comedy had free exercise.

Excellent… the seed of so much I love is here. Though it’s not fully formed (and in some places quite lacking), Scott’s constantly expressed desire for the reader to fill in the novel’s brevity with imagination is very powerful, and conjures later novels’ investigations of the same themes. (This is all at once, a novel of ideas, a bildungsroman, a war novel, etc.) In this way (and through Scott’s many wonderful asides and references to historical accounts), becomes a palimpsest that is completely wonderful to read.

Oh, wavering Waverley. The story of a young Englishman caught up in forces larger than he can understand, in a culture foreign and yet familiar enough to lull him into a false sense of security. Treachery, bravado, romance, mystery abound.

I absolutely understand why this became a literary sensation. The characters! The setting! The plot! It's all so closely written. The little author's asides feel so intimate, as if you're in a conspiracy with the author to enjoy the story.

I know very little about the Jacobite rebellion (essentially only what I've read in Outlander, lol) but didn't feel lost in the history here. Scott doesn't burden the story too much with it, but uses it expertly as a detailed backdrop.

Intro
I'll start off by stating this is my first experience with Scott. I'll also start off by stating this is his first attempt at writing a novel. He was so uncertain about its outcome that he used an alias for the authorship. So it wasn't a surprise to find that the book has many flaws. The writing is inconsistent, often pedantic, and ignores character conflicts that would occur in the natural world. That said, Scott takes an approach that levies his literary and historical knowledge on the reader. He doesn't hold the reader's hand through drawing conclusions and expects you to have ample experience with the classical literature of his time.

Plot and Story
From the beginning, the reader is thrown into the story and expected to quickly gather one's literary wherewithal to follow Waverley along his naive and privileged journey. Scott uses a plethora of references to classic literature to indirectly convey the sense of each scene. If you are not aware of, or don't bother to look up, these references then the first half of the book may feel very haphazardly written. He severely scaled down his flamboyant writing style at some point in the middle of the book. Surprisingly, it took away from the cleverness of his writing. The second half felt lazily written in comparison. I was left with sifting through the story and enjoying the occasional expression of 18th century Scottish socialite behavior. What he manages to do in the second half of the book, however, is bring in an ample tone of reality to the story. Retrospectively, this could be for the benefit of maintaining a sense of Waverley's changing perspective on his actions and surroundings.

Characters
The characters are difficult to like. Even though Scott doesn't expressly state it, everyone in the book is critically flawed in some way. I found myself not caring much for anyone's outcome and thinking that certain consequences were part of the natural order of things. That said, Scott does a good job of displaying societal inequities without saying "Look. An inequity." It's expected that the reader identifies and understands

Conclusion
I'm at somewhat of an impasse on what to think of this book. I don't want to give it 4 stars because of the subpar writing and deference to loyalist sentiment. That said, it's possible that Scott slipped in a very clever undertone of inequity between Scotland and England as well as women and men. However, if he did then it was never very clear that it was his intent. It could just be my modern mind reading into the scenes he found completely justifiable. Without having a clear understanding of that portion of the book, I must stick with 3 stars.

Charlie is my darling...

Young Edward Waverley has been brought up mainly by his uncle, Sir Everard Waverley, an English Tory and supporter of the Jacobite cause in the failed 1715 rebellion. When Edward reaches manhood, his absent father, a Whig and supporter of the Hanoverian government, arranges a commission for him in the Army. While Sir Everard is not keen on Edward having to swear allegiance to King George II (since in Sir Everard's eyes the true King is James III, in exile in France), he reluctantly agrees. Edward joins his regiment and is promptly posted to Dundee. After serving in a half-hearted way for a few months, Edward takes some leave and goes off to visit an old friend of his uncle, Baron Bradwardine, a staunch Jacobite. Through him, Edward becomes friends with Fergus Mac-Ivor, chieftain of the Highland Clan Mac-Ivor, and falls in love with his beautiful sister Flora. So when the 1745 rebellion begins, Edward finds himself caught between two loyalties – to the Hanoverians through his officership in the Army, and to the Jacobites through his friendships and the influence of his upbringing. The story tells the tale of the '45 Jacobite Rebellion and Edward's part in it.

The subtitle 'Tis Sixty Years Since refers to the ostensible time of writing, 1805, sixty years after the 1745 rebellion, although the book was not published until 1814. This book is often hailed as the first historical novel in the English language. It's also often claimed as one of the most important books in English literature, which doesn't half annoy us Scots, since it's written by a Scot about Scotland. I'm willing to compromise and say it's an important book in English-language literature. This isn't as insignificant a point as it may seem – Scott was one of the earliest Scots to write fiction in English, accepting that the Scottish language and culture was being subsumed into the dominant English culture of the time. However, in this, as in many of his books, his purpose was partly to explain Scottish culture and traditions to his English readership and do away with some of their misconceptions of the Scots, especially Highlanders, as a half-savage society. Along the way, he created some romanticised misconceptions of his own that gradually became part of the prevailing view of Scotland that lasted well into the 20th century. The cultural importance of Scott in his native country is memorialised not just by the massive monument to him in Princes Street in Edinburgh, the capital city, but also in the name of that city's main railway station – Waverley Station.

How I wish, therefore, that I could unreservedly wax lyrical about the wonders of the book! Sadly, taken purely in terms of reading pleasure, it's not the greatest piece of literature in the world, for all its cultural significance. A major reason for this is simply that tastes change over time, as does language. Although Scotland was one of the most literate societies in the world at the time Scott was writing, nevertheless authors tended to be addressing their work to others like themselves who had had a classical education (pretty much the only kind available), so this is liberally sprinkled with Latin and French and allusions to classical mythology which many modern readers (including this one) will find problematic at best and incomprehensible at worst. Even the English language is in a style that reads as pretty out-dated now and of course, there is some Scottish dialect too, not to mention the odd little bit of Gaelic. I read it in a version without footnotes, but would suggest it's one that probably needs them more than most. Not that any of this makes the plot hard to follow, but it does very much break the reading flow.

But these things probably wouldn't have bothered me had the book gripped me more. Overall, it's reasonably interesting, but very over-padded, especially the early part. For a long period there is no discernible plot, just lengthy character studies of the various people who will play a part when the story finally gets under way. Scott himself said that this was his way of allowing the characters to reveal themselves rather than simply being described, but to suit modern tastes most readers would probably want to get into the story a good deal sooner. And personally I could have happily lived without the lengthy and mediocre poetry that Scott stuffs in every so often – again a technique that would have been much more usual in his time than in ours, I think - which he uses as a way to illustrate Scottish culture and the oral storytelling tradition.

Then there are his assumptions about the pre-knowledge of his readers, probably correct at the time but not necessarily so now. He assumes that everyone knows the background to the Jacobite rebellion, the politics, the main players and the progress of the campaign. Well, yes, as it happens, I do, but I would think this could cause some problems for people who don't. What bothered me about it was that this assumption meant he left out all the bits that are exciting! We're not there when Bonnie Prince Charlie raises his standard at Glenfinnan, we don't get to fight at Culloden and we don't follow Charlie on his last romantic retreat over the sea to Skye! That anyone can make the '45 dull amazes me – it's one of the great romantic tragedies of all time!

Instead, Scott concentrates on showing the lifestyle and manners of both Highland and Lowland Scots of the period, and this he does very successfully, though with what I suspect is a decreasing degree of realism the further north he heads. There's some humour in it, and a lot – a lot! - of romance, as Edward swithers over the beautiful and fanatical Highland Flora and the sensible and adoring Lowland Rose. And his swithering between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites allows Scott to show both sides of the conflict, which he does without demonising either, in fact painting a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart. But all this swithering makes Edward a hero who inspired me with a desire to bash him over the head with a metaphorical brick while screaming “Make up your mind, for goodness sake, man!” Honestly, he makes Hamlet seem decisive!

So overall I'm afraid I was a little disappointed. I've read other Scott books in the past which I've enjoyed much more than this one, and am rather sorry it's the one that people are always recommended to read, purely because of its significance rather than its intrinsic enjoyability. I can't give more than three stars for the story and writing, with an extra one for its position of importance in both English-language and Scottish literature. I shall go into hiding now in case the last of the Jacobites come after me...

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A rather slow beginning gives way to a quite exciting middle, and then a putridly sappy ending.

A good romp throught the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

It's very unevenly paced, and there's a lot of authorial intrusion of a sort no other author I've read indulges in. The hero is an idiot and gets away with it, but somehow I didn't mind by the end. I spent the first half of the book wondering why I'd bothered, and the second half wondering which Scott I'd read next, so it can't have been all bad. If you've got any long train journeys coming up, give it a go!