The Heart of Midlothian

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... Read Full Review

Written in 1818, "The Heart Of Midlothian" is one of the most famous works of the great Scottish Writer, Sir Walter Scott. It is set largely in Scotland in the time between the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 and revolves around the Edinburgh riots of 1736 that saw the lynching of John Porteous, Captain of the City Guard, and the subsequent retaliation by the English Crown. Intimately connected with this is the story... Read Full Review

Having been asked to spend a few weeks at a remote Naval base in the former "German Democratic Republic", I had plenty of time on my hands to read Walter Scott’s "Heart of Midlothian" in the Oxford World’s Classics edition (with notes, 580 pages), something that whiled away the time more than satisfactorily, this novel being perhaps the best that Scott ever wrote. In his previous Waverley novel, "Old Mortality", he had described... Read Full Review

Heart of Midlothian is best known today in Scotland as the name of a football team from Edinburgh. Many may be aware that the team took its name from a novel, but Scott's story is little read nowadays so few indeed are aware that the novel took its name from a prison. This prison was situated in the centre of Edinburgh in the county of Midlothian, until it was torn down in 1817, and no doubt a certain irony was intended when... Read Full Review

Sir Walter Scott's 1818 novel, "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" deals with events in the lives of the Deans family from 1736 to the early 1750's. The novel begins with the 1736 Porteous riots, in which disgruntled citizens of Edinburgh storm the local prison to take revenge on a needlessly cruel official. With Anglo-Scottish relations in a tailspin and Queen Caroline levying a rash of punishments against Edinburgh in the background,... Read Full Review