cbr17bingo Culture
Rather an odd duck, this one. Some legal jibber-jabber in the frontpiece seems to indicate that this book was not intended to be sold in the US, yet I bought it at the UCLA bookstore. Hmm. Anyway.
First, let me digress. I grew up in a small town with a small library, and there really was no other source of books for me other than that, and my Mom’s Book-of-the-Month Club, when she could afford it. So imagine my thrill, when I started attending the local community college. College of the Desert was only a few years old at the time, and so to kick off its library, several local citizens had donated their own libraries to add to the collection. But these folks were of an age when one would have a collection of a (typically British) author’s works, and whether or not they were actually read was immaterial. They were basically decorative. You can still see sets like this at places such as the Huntington Gardens and Library (library room). But I adored this shit, and was totally ready to read every one, no matter who the author was. Actual college life intervened, but it was still a lovely dream.
Well, one of such series was the Waverly Novels, by Walter Scott. One of which (Ivanhoe) ended up being enormously popular but the entire series consisted of 48 volumes. This book is a minor addition to that series, not being actually a novel. Instead, it is supposedly the memoirs of Chrystal Croftangry. The narrator, after years abroad, has returned, wealthier than when he left, to his previous neighborhood in Edinburgh, the Canongate, near Holyrood House, once inhabited by Mary Queen of Scots. Reuniting with an elderly servant of the family, she tells him some tales, the three short stories that are the heart of this volume. Suffice it to say, no good ever comes of having too much pride.
So apparently Scott wrote this for some quick cash as he was concurrently working on one of the Waverly novels, so it suffers somewhat from being not much more than an outer shell constructed around a trio of stories. But of course in those days, word count was the important thing, and Scott already had enough of a reputation that he could afford to glide every now and then. And it’s always fun to give my Scot’s reading skills a workout. Must continue this journey. Lady of the Lake looks promising.