The Bride of Lammermoor

by Walter Scott

Other authorsFiona Robertson (Editor)
Paperback, 1991

Status

Available

Call number

823.7

Collection

Publication

Oxford University Press, USA (1991), Paperback, 518 pages

Description

The plans of Edgar, Master of Ravenswood to regain his ancient family estate from the corrupt Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland are frustrated by the complexities of the legal and political situations following the 1707 Act of Union, and by his passion for his enemy's beautifuldaughter Lucy. First published in 1819, this intricate and searching romantic tragedy offers challenging insights into emotional and sexual politics, and demonstrates the shrewd way in which Scott presented his work as historical document, entertainment, and work of art.

User reviews

LibraryThing member PuddinTame
By the end of this novel, I was leaving late for things because I had trouble putting it down, even though I knew how it ended. I cannot say if it is too predictable or not: being a classic people are always giving away the plot, and even Scott did that in his introduction, Even if he hadn't, it
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was adapted into an opera, which was discussed on a program I saw recently. If you have managed to get to the story without knowing the plot, you may wish to skip the introduction by Scott and anyone else until the end.

I found it not only a good narrative, but an unexpectedly complicated one. Scott seems somewhat ambivalent about many of the issues that he addresses and gives multiple points of view from the aristocrats to the peasantry. Thus, one can see a certain nostalgic glamor to the continuance of an ancient noble house in possession of its estates, the deserving qualities of the rising people who displace them, and also the resentment and poverty of the peasants. It is sometimes humorous and frequently cynical. His ambivalence towards his characters in interesting. This was a historical novel set over 100 years before when it was first written. Scott had as one of his purposes the recording of traditional Scottish customs, and this adds considerably to the interest and charm of the book. There is an appendix in this edition containing a timeline for the novel and Scottish history that I recommend that anyone not familiar with the time and place read first.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, although it has features that I know will put off some readers. Fortunately or unfortunately, the novel includes a small number of notes by Scott, designated in the text by numbers. Some are important for understanding, some just seem to afford the opportunity to whimsically throw in the odd tale or song. The editor has added an enormous number of notes, some of them essential, some a bit of a distraction while reading. There is also an extensive, and in my case necessary, glossary of Scots. One of the things that impressed me about the writing is that even with flipping back to the notes and glossary so frequently, the narrative still gripped my interest. Some readers may find this intolerable, I leave it to each to decide their own tastes.
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LibraryThing member drpeff
liked it-- a lot of social commentary.
LibraryThing member hbergander
When I was ten, I became acquainted with Robin Hood, the perfect hero for outdoor games, attractive to be captivated every afternoon by the Nottingham Sheriff. The children’s book led me on to Ivanhoe, another version of Robin allowing more sophisticated outdoor games, and months later to the
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Lammermoor bride. This novel offered the chance to deal with a girl in woods and meadows.
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LibraryThing member Meredy
Six-word review: Vindictive mother tragically separates Scottish lovers.

Extended review:

I don't know why I've had such a difficult time trying to review this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and yet I feel, unreasonably, as if I somehow had to defend that response. Is it so absurd to love the archaic
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language and rambling style of a 200-year-old fiction better than most of the contemporary works I've picked up in the past year?

What's more, my pleasure in it went well beyond the story and the language and took in the physical properties of the book itself.

Not that this was by any means the oldest book I've held and read, nor was it a particularly noteworthy old edition. But it is true that I seldom read books of that vintage any more.

I didn't want to take this book back to the library. It was a real book, well handled, many times read. It's an undated edition, but my guess is that it was published in the 1930s. It's just an ordinary everyman's inexpensive hardcover of the time, solidly cloth-bound, with deckle edge, tipped-in engraved illustrations, old-fashioned typeface, a glossary of Scottish dialect in the back, and, bless me, an index so you can look up characters by scene.

I might have read the same story in a paperback issued six months ago, but it wouldn't have been the same experience.

However, I feel certain that I'd have enjoyed it in any form, so long as the author's words were preserved and no misguided 21st-century editor had decided to make it easier for a modern audience to read.

Scott's historical melodrama was allegedly based on a real incident, that of a tragic love affair between the young son of an ancient noble family and the daughter of the man who engineered the loss of his hereditary properties, bringing his dying family line to penurious ruin.

Edgar, the young Master of Ravenswood, whose ancestral home and lands have been wrested away by the machinations of Sir William Ashton, finds himself smitten by Ashton's lovely daughter Lucy. For the sake of their romance, he makes peace with his sworn enemy and exchanges a pledge of engagement with Lucy. But Lucy's mother Lady Ashton, a pitiless, domineering woman who serves no interests but her own, sets herself against the match and insists that her daughter accept her choice of a husband instead.

Against a backdrop of Scottish customs, traditions, and politics of the early 18th century, the drama plays out as a strong brew of secrets and rivalries, loyalties and vengeance, promises and betrayal, mysterious prophecies and folk superstitions, love and fidelity and deceit and loss.

If, like me, you knew this story only as the plotline of Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor, you'll find that the adaptation for opera is a loose one indeed and that only a few of the basic plot elements--a secret love affair between members of hostile families, a forced marriage, madness, and death--are drawn from Scott's far more complex, character-rich, and emotionally engaging text. The pair's romance and its narrowly missed favorable outcome, the tension between Lucy's parents, the trivial incident that sets Ravenswood's former friend against him, and the unwavering loyalty of Ravenswood's old family servant Caleb Balderstone bring depths and dimensions to the story. The solitary ordeal of Lucy, cut off from all contact with Ravenswood by her mother's cruel stratagems and subjected to unbearable psychological pressure, is truly pitiable, and it is easy to see why she is broken by it. The graveside altercation between her brother and Ravenswood steers the plot to the final tragedy.

As in other tales of star-crossed lovers--Romeo and Juliet comes to mind--the lovers' passions, both in their transports of joy and in their utter grief, bring a quality of grandeur to the finale, rendering it cathartic. The last poignant moment belongs to old Caleb, who, like us, has borne sad witness to a chain of events that it seems nothing could have turned aside. It is a credit to the art of the storyteller that we can feel uplifted by the ultimate harmony of the drama even as the tragedy touches our hearts.
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LibraryThing member VeritysVeranda
The first two-thirds of the book was quite engaging, but I was disappointed by the end, which felt like it had been wrapped up quickly to finally put an end to the story.
LibraryThing member mbmackay
The 8th of Walter Scott's historical novels. Set in East Lothian in 1709 - 11, it tells the story of a doomed love affair amid ugly family pride. Scotland, at the time the novel is set, was recovering from the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Union - both of which had big repercussion on
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Scotland, and both play their part in the background of this novel. But history is a smaller player in this novel than others in the series.
The Gutenberg editions of the Scott novels seem to be derived from later editions of the books, often with extensive introductions, many of which give background to the plot. This tends, understandably, to detract from the mystery of the plot development. This book in particular, suffered from such a spoiler in the Introduction.
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LibraryThing member P_S_Patrick
One of Scott's best on the theme of star-crossed lovers, family feuds, noble ruins, and ruined nobles. Atmospheric and psychologically intense in places, though enlivened as ever by Scott’s humorous and memorable characters and way with a plot. Though, like many of his best works, leaves you with
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the feeling that it has been dragged out in certain sections and shortened or rushed in others.
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Language

Original publication date

1819

Physical description

518 p.; 7.3 inches

ISBN

0192817914 / 9780192817914

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