[Rarebooks] fa: JANE PORTER - THE SCOTTISH CHIEFS: A ROMANCE - 1810 (5 vols./1st Ed.)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with some other 19th-century British literature,  
auctions ending Sunday, Feb. 7. Details and images can be found at the  
URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340
OR
http://tinyurl.com/yhk74ma

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A., CA USA


Jane Porter: The Scottish Chiefs, A Romance. London: Printed for  
Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster-Row, 1810. FIRST EDITION.  
Five volumes. Tall 12mo (18 cm) in period half crimson calf and  
marbled boards with gilt-stamped rules and titles; bound without the  
half-titles, but errata leaf is present in vol. 1. Sadleir 1971; CBEL  
III, 414; NSTC P2613.
The Scottish Chiefs, a melodramatic and romanticized retelling of the  
life of William Wallace, was one of the earliest successful historical  
novels, setting the stage for Scott's Waverley and all the rest.  
Beautiful, high-strung and sensitive, Jane Porter (1776-1850) had  
soaked up the old Scottish tales as a child in Edinburgh, where she  
was friends with a young Walter Scott. They renewed the acquaintance  
years later in London and Porter always cherished the belief that her  
work had greatly influenced Scott's later successes. The truth,  
however was somewhat different. As James Hogg recalled years later:  
"[Scott] said to me...when The Scottish Chiefs first appeared, ‘I am  
grieved about this work of Miss Porter’s! I cannot describe to you how  
much I am disappointed. I wished to think so well of it; and I do  
think highly of it as a work of genius. But lord help her! ... It is  
not safe meddling with the hero of a country and of all others I  
cannot endure to see the character of Wallace frittered away to that  
of a fine gentleman.’" Wildly successful at the time, a true  
international sensation, The Scottish Chiefs was dismissed as  
melodramatic rubbish by most later critics.