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First Edition, second state. Hard cover, Post 8vo, (4 x 7 inches) in contemporary three-quarter calf, over marbled paper-covered boards, edged with a narrow floral roll in blind, the spine double-ruled with gilt into faux compartments, the titles upon onlaid black morocco labels gilt to the second and fifth, the remaining compartments tooled with a diamond-shaped neoclassical stamp in blind. A.e.g., marbled end papers. Vol I: [3], [iii title page], [iv blank], v-xvi preface, 315pp. [3]pp. Ads and half title discarded. Printer's imprint in all caps at rear: "EDINBURGH:/PRINTED BY JAMES BALANTYNE AND CO." --seen all vols. Vol. II: [3], [i ,title],[ii, blank], [1-2, half title, blank], [3]-332, [3]pp. Vol. III : [3], [i-ii, title, blank], [1-2 half title, blank], [3]-370pp. [3]pp. Vol III Points: Page 167 does not have the Figure 17; line 7 has "rolled his eyes" (second state revision). Page 168 line 16 "orders--I". Page 369, also second state, per Todd & Bowden. **CONDITION: Very Good Plus. Owner signature to title page. Vol. I and II in old ink. Moderate shelf wear to paper covered board edges and faces. Top edge a bit dusty. Hinges and joints in order, binding firm, clean corners. Very light foxing to prelims, otherwise generally clean and bright.**Scottish historical novelist, poet, translator and great nineteenth-century tartan influencer, SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832) constructs what is essentially a very scary ghost story-slash-romance drama out of the religious-political turmoil of seventeenth-century English Civil War in this, the 22nd of his Waverley novels. The Oxfordshire royal hunting lodge of Woodstock is the setting for the story, complete with a spooky secret entrance and passages which play pivotal parts in the plot, allowing Charles II to escape his Parliamentarian pursuers following battlefield setbacks at Worcester in 1651. Joseph Glanvill[e]'s arguments for the existence of witchcraft in works such as "Saducimus triumphatus" (1681), and a document titled "The Good Devil of Woodstock " (1649) are prefatorily invoked to chill the progress of a band of marauding Cromwellian commissioners bent on dis-parking and destroying the king's demesne, with some scenes of clever phantasmagorian shennanigans executed by the royalist locals to distract the baddies. Aside from the entertaining ghostly miasma, a more conventional romantic triangle plays out between the Sovereign, the Squire, Col. Markham Everard, and Alice Lee, daughter of the King's Ranger and property manager, Sir Henry Lee. Originally published in April, 1826, it was not until the following year in which Scott would finally take credit for the authorship of these immensely popular novels. Todd and Bowden 190A. Watson 674. Wolff 6233. (AMJ)
Ref: FINE 9859
$365.00