The Monastery

Halbert could no longer endure to look upon this quiet scene, but, starting up, dashed his book from him, and exclaimed aloud: "To the fiend I bequeath all books, and the dreamers that make them!..." -from The Monastery They were the literary phenomenon of their time: The Waverly novels, 48 volumes set in fanciful re-creations of the Scottish Highlands (and other lands) of centuries past, published between 1814 and 1831 and devoured by a reading public hungry for these sweeping, interconnected melodramas. The series popularized historical fiction, though they're also abundant in astute political and social commentary. The Monastery, Volume 18 of Waverly, is a delightfully humorous and surprisingly supernatural tale of theological and family conflict during the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Scottish novelist and poet SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832), a literary hero of his native land, turned to writing only when his law practice and printing business foundered. Among his most beloved works are The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rob Roy (1818), and Ivanhoe (Waverly Vols. 16 and 17) (1820).