The Antiquary (Annotated)

Set on the northeastern coast of Scotland in the late eighteenth century, The Antiquary is at once a comic novel of manners, a romance of hidden lineage, and a meditation on the uses and abuses of historical memory. Through the figure of Jonathan Oldbuck, Scott satirizes pedantic antiquarianism while also honoring the impulse to recover the past. Its richly textured dialogue, Scots idiom, Gothic a...