The Antiquary

by Walter Scott and Bart Sir Walter Scott

Book Overview

The Antiquary, Scott's personal favorite among his novels, is characteristically wry and urbane. A mysterious young man calling himself 'Lovel' travels idly but fatefully toward the Scottish seaside town of Fairport. Here he is befriended by the antiquary Jonathan Oldbuck, who has taken refuge from his own personal disappointments in the obsessive study of miscellaneous history. Their slow unraveling of Lovel's true identity will unearth and redeem...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199555710
• ISBN13: 9780199555710
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.1" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Book Review by a Scots/American

Readers; It is good to see Sir W.Scott back amoung the shelves. The creator of modern Scots culture and literature, is at last seen in America. This is a good book to start you first reading of this writer of the highest order. Happy Reading, buy a copy, and then some others

Scott's favorite but not a fave among his readers -- No Spoilers Here

Let me say up front that I love this novel, that as crazy and at times annoying as it reads initially it grows on the patient reader rather quickly, and puts off a warm glow in your memory when you're done. But because it is an anomaly in his catalog, I hesitate to recommend it to most readers. If you either a., haven't read and enjoyed a few other Scott novels, and so are accustomed to his tone and style, or b., do not appreciate fussy, erudite, late eighteenth century-style humor, then this is not the Scott novel for you. Go to Waverley, Ivanhoe, The Heart of Midlothian, Kenilworth, Guy Mannering, or Rob Roy. The Antiquary is not so much a historical novel as it is a novel about history--about how and in what ways people bury, distort, and attempt to recall the past. Two plotlines, one humorous and unpretentious, one gothic and romantic, dovetail none too gracefully but in delightfully surprising ways. Critics tend to prefer the scenes set among a Scots peasant fishing family for their authenticity; I much prefer the mock-gothic comedy scenes, especially those featuring wise-ass beggar Edie Ochiltree. I like to think that the jovial Scott preferred them too. (Literary critics often lack a sense of humor.) The third of Scott's novels after Waverley and Guy Mannering, The Antiquary resembles the second more than the first in its freehanded mixture of a different styles and genres and in its enthusiasm.

Unco Guid!

This book is rare fun indeed!--Aside from the rather pat basic plot---But what do you expect when you open one of Sir Walter's Romances? ---the Oxford edition, supplied with Scott's own glossary of unco Scottish terms and the ever helpful Oxford notes offers enjoyment and delight at every turn. I say a Romance, and that IS the basic plot structure here, but it's the Comedy that will catch most readers, I trow: Particularly, the comedy in the learned dissertations and piquant observations of the eponymous antiquary, Mr. Oldbuck, but perhaps even more so in the canny phrasings of the itinerant "Bedesman" or "gaberlunzie" Edie Ochiltree. The most wonderful character though is the Scottish dialect itself. I find myself, after reading this book that Scott loved above all his others, thinking and almost talking in the musical cadences and turns of phrase interlarded throughout the book Perhaps, as the academics say, this is a book that deals with "the problem of how to understand the past so as to enable the future." - Enable the future? - In any event, don't miss out on these truly lovely narrative annals of times lang syne. And beware the "phoca"!

A very funny novel, beautifully presented at last

Before OUP World's Classics published this handsome, attractive new edition, you could only get this novel in paperback through Penguin. The Penguin edition, sadly, gives the book in a tinkered-with text that Scott never saw, and supplies it with a baffling and unhelpful introduction by some academic called Punter that he wouldn't have understood a word of. This was a crying shame, as The Antiquary is Scott's funniest, most mature book and amply deserves the loving treatment OUP have now given it. The introduction and notes to this new amazingly inexpensive paperback are clear, intelligent & actually intended to help someone enjoy a very subtle and profound piece of storytelling - well done to this N Watson (a good Scots name, promisingly!). The book itself, as I say, is hilarious and surprisingly moving, as good on personal emotion and behaviour as Austen but with the gift for big-scale action and comedy of Dickens or Thackeray -- the bit with the fight with the seal just goes on getting funnier.