Regular marked price: $15.95Discount Price: $11.96
Cost Savings: $3.99 (25%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 8237
EAN num: 9780192831873
ISBN number: 0192831879
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 528
Printing Date: May 23, 2002
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 218281
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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 the secrets and lies which have devastated the guilt-haunted Earl of Glenallan, and will reinstate the tottering fortunes of Sir Arthur Wardour and his daughter Isabella.
First published in 1816 in the aftermath of Waterloo, The Antiquary deals with the problem of how to understand the past so as to enable the future. Set in the tense times of the wars with revolutionary France, it displays Scott's matchless skill at painting the social panorama and in creating vivid characters, from the earthy beggar Edie Ochiltree to the loquacious and shrewdly humorous Antiquary himself.
The text is based on Scott's own final, authorized version, the 'Magnum Opus' edition of 1829.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
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"!
Rated by buyers 
-
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.
Find other books like this one:
