The Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott’s ’minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ 3 Vol Set

This critical edition of Scott's Minstrelsy presents a seminal 19th-century work for a 21st-century audience
This 3-volume edition of Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3) presents nearly 100 poems and songs, many of them containing fascinating narratives of death, murder and abductions. It also includes his extended essays on history and the supernatural, in which Scott gives the background to the ballad narratives opening up a window into the life of the Scottish Borders around 1800. The Edinburgh edition presents Scott's original text in a new critical way and tells the stories behind the stories, naming the sources and singers, identifying places and bringing alive the cultural background. For the first time, the extraordinary vitality of the Scottish culture and narratives in the Borders is brought to light through the publication of this iconic text in Scotland's cultural memory.

Professor Sigrid Rieuwerts is Reader in the Department of English and Linguistics (British Studies) at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. She is the General Editor of B.A.S.I.S: Ballads and Songs International Studies and B.A.S.E: Ballads and Songs Engagements both for Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier (WVT), the editor of The Ballad Repertoire of Anna Gordon, Mrs Brown of Falkland (Scottish Text Society, 2011) and co-editor, with Dace Bula, of Singing the Nations: Herder’s Legacy (WVT, 2007), with Roger deV. Renwick, of Ballad Meditations: Folksongs Recovered, Represented, and Reimagined (WVT, 2006), with Helga Stein, of Bridging the Cultural Divide: Our Common Ballad Heritage (Olms, 2000), and with Tom Cheesman, of Ballads into Books (Peter Lang, 1999).