Castle Dangerous

Find Out What Scott Really Wrote

Going back to the original manuscripts, a team of scholars has uncovered what Scott originally wrote and intended his public to read before errors, misreadings and expurgations crept in during production.

The Edinburgh Edition offers you:

• A clean, corrected text
• Textual histories
• Explanatory notes
• Verbal changes from the first-edition text
• Full glossaries

Title Description

Castle Dangerous is the realisation of a thirty-year old project of Scott’s to retell a story found in Barbour’s Brus. Set in the early fourteenth century during the Scottish Wars of Independence, an English knight for a love wager commits himself to defend Douglas Castle against Scottish attempts to retake it. The ballad-like story embraces intriguing elements including national rivalry, and the idealisation and betrayal of love. The Douglas area, seen as an almost surrealist landscape of ravines, trenches, and tombs, and in abysmal weather, forms an appropriate setting for an impressively bleak narrative.