About this title: Two feuding Scottish families, a tragic love affair, a cruel and scheming mother, murder, and insanity form the basis for Scott's most intricate and searching love story, the tale of tragically conflicting passion which conveys challenging insights into emotional and sexual politics. The novel was the basis for Donizetti's 1835 opera, "Lucia di ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford, England
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780192817914ISBN:0192817914
Description: Good. A few marginal notations, underlinings. 460 p. Introduction by Fiona Robertson. Includes Note on the Text, Select Bibliography, Chronology, Scott's Notes, Appendix: The Bride of Lammermoor and Scottish History, Editor's Notes, and Glossary. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2001-05-01
ISBN-13:9780140436563ISBN:0140436561
Description: Good. Minimal damage to the cover, dust jacket not necessarily included minimal wear to binding, majority of pages undamaged, minimal to no highlighting/underlining of text, no missing p. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2001-05-01
ISBN-13:9780140436563ISBN:0140436561
Description: Very good. Very minimal damage to the cover (no holes or tears, only minimal scuff marks), in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, minimal to no highlighting/under. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, Oxford
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780192817914ISBN:0192817914
Description: Good. 0192817914 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall The covers have edge wear and mild creases, the spine is creased and there is a name on the first page. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: A.L. Burt Company Publishers
Description: Very Good. An admirably TIGHT, SOUND and CLEAN copy of this classic book; bit of shelf wear, slight slant. The Bride of Lammermoor is based on a real-life family tragedy that Scott had heard as a boy from his maternal great-aunt Margaret Swinton and which became one of his mother's favourite fireside tales. Scott's heroine Lucy Ashton, derives from Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the great jurist James Dalrymple, first Viscount Stair. The Stairs were a landowning family sympathetic to the ... read more
Binding: Hardbound
Publisher: Harper & Brothers, New York and London
Description: Very Good. 8" by 5& 1/2" Blue-green cloth binding with gilt title and decoration, clean and sturdy, illustrated, early twentieth century, page edges rough cut, top edge gilt, no DJ. read more
Edition: Victoria Edition
Binding: Decorative red cloth gilt
Publisher: Copp Clark, Toronto
Date Published: 1897
Description: Fair. 12mo (7 3/4"). Casing and spine ends with worn spots and slight stains. Frontispiece. Some edge stains. Gilt lettering on spine. Back hinge small tear. 337 pp. Reading copy. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
Date Published: 2009-08-30
ISBN-13:9780199552504ISBN:0199552509
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780199552504. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780140436563ISBN:0140436561
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Date Published: 2001-05-01
ISBN-13:9780140436563ISBN:0140436561
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780140436563. read more
"The Bride of Lammermoor is a dark novel about revenge, love, and what happens to those who seek their own happiness in the face of family opposition and ill-fate. The book is filled with dark omens and the occasional ghost makes an appearance to foreshadow the evil that is to come. Scott is a Scottish author and the book portrays a Scotland that is dark, superstitious, and going through a time of political upheaval. This book may be "English" literature, but it thankfully avoids the ubiquitous happy ending of so much literature out of England at that time.
One of the most interesting and also most difficult aspects of the book is the cast of traditional Scottish characters who speak in dialect. The more you read, the easier it is to understand, but even by the end of the book I still had to slow down and sound out some of their words to understand what they were saying. The rest you have to get just by context. As with so many of the classics, reading the footnotes can be key to understanding all of the action of the novel.
The footnotes will also help you understand the politics of the time. Ravenswood's fortunes are lost and remade based on changes in the political scene. The book is written as a retrospective, and there are numerous references to the more "civil" times that the narrator is currently living in. In the story, the law is bent to the will of those in power, and applied differently to different men. The narrator rues this fact, and is thankful for the "modern" system that applies the law equally. There is a sense that the reason this modern system has come into place is due to the influence of English law. The book is set in the context of the English and Scottish union as a single state, and the affect this has on the politics of Scotland plays a key role. We see the lairds of Scotland struggling to adjust to a new power system and to keep as much power to themselves as they can. The ability of a Scotsman to appeal to a higher court than ever before also gives Ravenswood the ability to avenge his father through the law rather than violence, although it is not his first instinct to do so.
The novel takes a common approach to creating a sense of reality - there is an internal narrator who tells us the story. The novel begins with an introduction to this narrator and an explanation of why he is bothering to tell this particular story at this time (to honor his friend who has recently died). He then moves into telling us the story, which becomes more believable through this mechanism. He is also able to comment on the action throughout, without creating a sense of distance by drawing attention to the author of the novel.
Finally, as touched on above, foreshadowing is an important element throughout the story. Before the narrator even begins to tell his tale, we are presented with a drawing of a key scene. From that moment on we have a sense of dread about what will happen to the protagonists who were portrayed in such a dreadful way. Prophecies, legends, and three hags (a clear reference to the three witches of Macbeth) all continue to make it more and more clear to the reader that Ravenswood and Lucy are destined to be unhappy. Foreshadowing is a dangerous trick - at a certain point the reader may wonder why he should even bother to continue reading if he already knows what is going to happen. Scott leaves enough mystery to keep us wanting to discover what happens, and he tells the story in such an engaging way that you would want to keep reading even if there was no mystery at all."
"Scott really is a masterful novelist. If, like me, your knowledge of this tale originates in Donizetti's opera, you will be fascinated by the job of his librettists! They managed to plumb the psychological depths of the story even as they did away with 90% of the characters and plot. The recognizable plot line of the opera starts up about Chapter 20, or nearly 170 pages into the novel. And the last chapters move along with the same intensity as the opera. But the excitement of the novel lies in the ways Scott deploys the standard 19th century novelist's tools to full advantage. He has a fine way of ordering the narrative so that we might be surprised just as a character is surprised, and learn very naturally in the following chapter all the back story that we expect to explain a happening (in particular the appearance of guests at Wolf's Crag and the subsequent story of the change in political winds that precipitated it). True, Scott also deploys traditions of the 19th century novel that seem strained now (a well placed bullet in a charging bull is one thing, but a second well placed thunderstorm that makes turning away unwanted guests impossible is a bit much). Scott also makes full use of Scots dialect and auguries for turning the tale exotic and mysterious. And his own liberal use of foreshadowing makes sure we won't be too surprised by the ending. And somehow, Scott manages that forte of the English novel -- he spends two thirds of the book winding string so that when he pulls the last one and the whole knot comes together it is as inevitable as the sun rising (or the fog rolling in over the Scottish coast line!)"
"While the novel's focus occasionally seems a little off (most readers, I imagine, would be far more interested in the the thoughts of the title character than in the property disputes and hunting outings which take up a large portion of the book), the sections dealing with the central characters (particularly Lucy, Edgar, and Lady Ashton) are well drawn and fascinating. The melodrama escalates in that perfect restraint that only writers of the nineteenth century seem able to manage, culminating in chilling and intriguing final scenes. The characters are more assuredly not those of Donizetti's brilliant opera, but they are no less interesting for that."
"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."
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