T HIS edition of the Waverley Novels will be found to be, in various respects, the best and most attractive issue that has yet appeared of these renowned productions of Sir Walter Scott. The aim of the publishers has been to make it pre-eminent as an édition de luxe. The edition is printed from a new and especially excellent font of type in a handsome large octavo form, and each novel will make an elegant volume, equally suitable for the library shelf or the drawing-room table. The paper, especially manufactured for this edition, is of extra quality and fineness. The printing is conducted with great care, to produce correctness and excellence in the work generally, and ensure the position of this edition as the best among the various issues of the Waverley Novels. The numerous woodcut illustrations form a distinctive and important feature, and would in themselves be sufficent to distinguish the present edition from all its predecessors. No author presented, in his work, such a field to the artist as the Great Wizard of the North, whose writings continue to be the delight of successive generations. The immense and varied antiquarian knowledge of the author of the Waverley Novels, and the great interest he took in all relating to mediæval times and the past generally, enabled him to describe with equal · enjoyment and accuracy of detail the scenes and personages in his famous tales. "Who would now imagine," says Prescott, "that he could form a satisfactory notion of the golden days of Queen Bess that had not read 'Kenilworth,' or of Richard Cœur de Lion and his brave paladins that had not read 'Ivanhoe '?" The artists who have supplied the very numerous illustrations have caught the very spirit and shared in the enthusiasm of the great master. The illustrations are not mere fancy pictures, but will be found to present correct and instructive representations of localities, historical personages, costumes, armour architectural details, monuments, etc. For instance, the pictorial illustrations to IVANHOE, the first volume of the series, form a complete archæological study of the England o Richard I., its princes and nobles, its Saxon and Norman race, its architecture, costumes armour, etc., the various accessories being depicted with strict fidelity from existing specimens. It has been rightly declared by a great author to be the glory of Scott that, by nic attention to costume and character in his novels, he raised them to historic importanc without impairing them as works of art. LONDON: WARD, LOCK, AND CO., SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C NEW YORK: 10, BOND STREET. |