Oeuvres

Edition translated by Defaucompret. Each volume has an engraved title with a vignette and at least 2 steel engravings per work, the animated scenes are by Tony Johannot, the views are English engravings. 28 folding maps heightened in colors, including a large map of Scotland, at the end of the History of Scotland.
Half navy blue shagreen binding, slightly later, ca 1850. Spine with raised bands decorated with gilt compartments and thick and thin fillets, in blind and gilt. Spine uniformly and slightly darkened. Author, volume number and title gilt. Volume 1: trace of dampstain to one corner of p. 300 to the end. Volume 4: broad yellowing on title page to p.30. Volume 7: trace of dampstain in left margin p. 197 to the end. Volume XXIII, trace of pale yellow dampstain in upper margin slightly affecting the text throughout the volume. Some traces of rubbing. Scattered foxing. Very handsome set, well bound.
Important critical edition, with all the author's prefaces for the different editions, and notes.
Details of the edition: 1) Waverley 2) Guy Mannering 3) L'Antiquaire 4) Rob-Roy 5) Le Nain noir & Les Puritains d'Écosse 6) La Prison d'Édimbourg 7) La Fiancée de Lammermoor ; L'Officier de fortune 8) Ivanhoé 9) Le Monastère 10) L'Abbé 11) Kenilworth 12) Le Pirate 13) Aventures de Nigel 14) Peveril du Pic 15) Quentin Durward 16) Les Eaux de Saint-Ronan 17) Redgauntlet 18) Les Fiancés ou Le Connétable de Chester 19) Le Talisman ou Richard en Palestine 20) Woodstock 21) Chroniques de la Canongate 22) La Jolie Fille de Perth 23) Charles le Téméraire 24) Robert comte de Paris 25) Le Château périlleux & Histoire de la démonologie et de la sorcellerie 26, 27 & 28) Histoire d'Écosse 29 & 30) Romans poétiques
Scott's great dark novels have obscured the fact that he is a great ironist and keen observer of human psychology, closer to Dickens and Fielding than one might initially believe. Yet what the generation of Romantic authors, who were overwhelmed by the discovery of Walter Scott, retained was primarily the historical and romantic tragedy, and the literary use of Scottish legends. Scott, like so many other great authors of English literature, is unfortunately reduced in France to a few novels. The greater part remains unpublished today, which makes this edition all the more valuable.

Defauconpret, one of the principal figures in the dissemination of Scott’s work in France, accompanies this substantial set with a particularly rich visual apparatus. Designed to follow the movements of the characters and locate the settings of the narratives within Scott’s Scotland and England, the maps by Perrot and Tardieu are complemented by Tony Johannot’s figure scenes and the English views. This cartographic presence gives the collection an almost topographical character: the reader does not merely move through the novels. He becomes a traveller within them, following their roads, borders and landscapes.

Alongside Scott’s novels, these thirty volumes include his History of Scotland and his poetical works. From one volume to the next, the maps allow the reader to follow the narratives across the very ground on which they unfold, from Scotland to the borders and roads that structure Scott’s imaginative world.