The Antiquary (Oxford World's Classics)

Rating:
Summary: A very funny novel, beautifully presented at last
Review: Before OUP World's Classics published this handsome, attractive new edition, you could only get this novel in paperback through Penguin. The Penguin edition, sadly, gives the book in a tinkered-with text that Scott never saw, and supplies it with a baffling and unhelpful introduction by some academic called Punter that he wouldn't have understood a word of. This was a crying shame, as The Antiquary is Scott's funniest, most mature book and amply deserves the loving treatment OUP have now given it. The introduction and notes to this new amazingly inexpensive paperback are clear, intelligent & actually intended to help someone enjoy a very subtle and profound piece of storytelling - well done to this N Watson (a good Scots name, promisingly!). The book itself, as I say, is hilarious and surprisingly moving, as good on personal emotion and behaviour as Austen but with the gift for big-scale action and comedy of Dickens or Thackeray -- the bit with the fight with the seal just goes on getting funnier.