“THE VIVIFICATION OF HISTORY”
SCOTT, Walter. The Works. WITH: OLCOTT, Charles S. The Country of Sir Walter Scott. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1912-13. Fifty-one volumes. Octavo, 20th-century full black morocco gilt, raised bands, top edges gilt, uncut and partly unopened. $8000.
Limited large-paper edition of Scott’s celebrated historical novels, number 207 of only 375 sets, profusely illustrated, including a hand-colored view and a frontispiece in each volume, portraits of female characters, and photographs of locations and scenery “very much as Scott saw them,” very handsomely bound, with a lengthy autograph letter by Scott tipped into Volume I.
In his "Waverly Novels" (first published 1814-32), Scott was not only dramatizing Scotland and England's past but also "pouring out the stores of anecdote and legend and the vivid impressions of the scenery which he had been imbibing from his early childhood while rambling through the country in close and friendly intercourse with all classes. Scott's personal charm, his combination of masculine sense with wide and generous sympathy, enabled him to attract an unprecedentedly numerous circle of readers to these almost impromptu utterances of a teeming imagination" (DNB). The autograph letter bound into Volume I is dated 1827, Edinburgh and addressed to Frances, Lady Shelley. Shelley's husband was a distant relation of the poet, but Lady Shelley is most well-known today for being a close friend of the Duke of Wellington, the soldier and politician who would assume the role of Prime Minister one year after this letter's composition. In addition to referring to an earlier visit Lady Shelley had made to Scott's country house, Abbotsford, Scott asks her to receive his son (also Walter Scott), an officer in the 15th Hussars, when he comes to visit, and alludes to the possibility of Lady Shelley using her connection to Wellington to help advance the younger Walter Scott's military career. (Scott recorded writing this letter to Lady Shelley in his journal the next day). The letter has been trimmed on the one edge, affecting both text and the signature of Scott. Includes Scott's most famous works Waverley, Rob Roy, The Bride of Lammermoor and Ivanhoe. In an attempt to create an "ideal edition," the editors commissioned a series of photographs of Scottish scenery "to enable the reader fully to understand these backgrounds and thereby add materially to his appreciation of the author…These pictures represent the scenes very much as Scott saw them. The natural scenery—mountains, woods, lakes, rivers, seashore, and the like—is nearly the same as in his day. The ruins of ancient castles and abbeys were found to correspond very closely with his his descriptions." With The Country of Sir Walter Scott, describing a tour of Scotland in search of Scott landmarks and scenery for the set, also profusely illustrated. Additional hand-colored title page finished in gilt in Volume I. Bookplates.
Fine condition.