Jonathan Oldbuck, the antiquary of the title, has a passion for the past - and delights in trying to convey it. He meets the mysteriously taciturn young Lovel and the two strike up a friendship, bonding over Roman ruins. When Lovel falls for Isabella, daughter of a local landowner, it looks like an impossible situation. Sharp, funny, gothic, romantic, and full of action, this is a thoroughly entertaining window on Scottish life in the summer of 1794: it was Scott's intention to show the spirit of the times, and how the past affects the present - and it was his own favourite of all his novels.
Scott's genial romance--mixing elements of comedy, adventure, melodrama, and mystery--presents difficulties that David Rintoul's skilled, heartfelt performance more than overcomes. To defects of its period (published 1816) such as slowness and verbosity, the book adds frequent Latin quotations--glossed-in asides--and conversations in the Scots dialect--sometimes impenetrable, though one usually ga
