‘One significator…pressed remarkably upon our astrologer’s attention. Mars, having dignity in the cusp of the twelfth house, threatened captivity, or sudden and violent death to the native’
On the auspicious night that Guy Mannering is shown to the house of the Bertrams of Ellengowan, their heir is born and Mannering, a sceptical astrologer, predicts his future. Five years later the prophecy is fulfilled, and Harry Bertram finds himself at the centre of a plot to rob him of his inheritance. Harry’s subsequent struggles are set against a background of social chaos and upheaval in a socially fragmented land where everyone, from landowners to gypsies, is searching for their rightful place.
The text, taken from the authoritative Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels, follows Guy Mannering as it was first published in 1815, with the addition of significant passages from the manuscript that have been omitted from all previous editions. This volume also contains a new critical introduction by Jane Millgate, and a chronology, bibliography, historical and explanatory notes and glossary.
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