St Ronan’s Well

Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1824 Three volumes. First edition, first printing. Original gray paper boards with white labels printed in black to spines, untrimmed edges. About good set with light soiling and toning to boards, light spotting to text, spine ends chipped and with loss, some effacement to print on spine labels, previous owner signatures to front free endpapers and title pages. Overall, still a pleasing set, in rare original boards. Todd & Bowden 171Aa. In St Ronan's Well, a small town becomes a hub for fashionable characters when a mineral spring is discovered. In this setting, two half-brothers, Valentine Bulmer and Francis Tyrell, fight for the hand of Clara Mowbray, Bulmer motivated by financial gain and Tyrell by love. Scott wrote the novel in less than six months, though its release was delayed slightly as his publisher convinced him at the last minute to alter a thread in the narrative to preserve the virtuousness of Clara. The book's comedy of manners style is somewhat in the vein of Jane Austen, of whom Scott was a great admirer. St Ronan's Well is one of Sir Walter Scott's famed Waverley Novels, a series of nearly thirty historical novels that includes such classic works as Waverley (1814), Rob Roy (1817), and Ivanhoe (1819). Credited as the inventor of the historical novel genre, St Ronan's Well is the sole novel by Scott that is set in his contemporary 19th century.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Good.