Physical description

Waverley Novels Vol 39 Woodstock or the Cavalier, Light brown hardcover lettering in black text.
Author: Sir Walter Scott
Publisher: Fisher Son & Co
Date: 1838

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on spine with typed text PAT FIC SCO
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Public Library
Front loose end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service

Summary

The subject volume of Waverley Novels Vol 39 published by Fisher Son & Co (1838) is part of a collected 48 volume set of Sir Walter Scott's works, containing various stories. Vol 39 in the 1836 Fisher edition reprints later entries from the fourth series, as these stories originally appeared in Scott's Magnum Opus 48 volume editions, the first from 1816. With the influential “Magnum Opus” editions from 1829–1833 by Robert Cadell, serving as the basis for later reprinted published sets like Fisher's.
Scott's "Woodstock," or “The Cavalier” is a historical novel originally published in 1826 as the 22nd in the Waverley series. Set in 1651 at Woodstock Manor during the English Commonwealth after the Battle of Worcester, it dramatises Charles II's daring escape from Cromwell's forces.
The story is about a royalist Sir Henry Lee and his daughter Alice, they lose their Woodstock home to Colonel Markham Everard, a sympathetic round head relative, who seeks protection for them from Cromwell, who suspects the site as a hideout for fugitive Charles II (disguised as a royal page "Louis Kerneguy"). Charles as the page courts Alice, sparking jealousy with Everard, amid duels, haunting in secret passages, and Cromwell's siege. Charles escapes with help from allies like Wildrake and Albert Lee, who impersonates him.
The key themes to this novel are that it contrasts Cavalier loyalty and Puritan zeal, loyalty across divides, romance amid politics, and supernatural folklore masking intrigue. In the Fisher Son & Co edition, it reprints this story from Scott's revised collected original work in 1826.