The poem that helped make the Scottish Highlands a place to visit

Walter Scott first published The Lady of the Lake in 1810, and readers went on wanting it for generations. This edition came from James R. Osgood and Company of Boston in 1883, more than seventy years later, for the general readers and students who still turned to it.

It is a long story told in verse, a romance and a conflict played out among the people and customs of the Highlands. Scott’s descriptions were vivid enough to help shape the picture of Scotland that nineteenth-century writers and travellers carried with them, and reading the poem now is a way to see one of the places that picture came from.

This is an illustrated edition. The engraved frontispiece is present; the other illustrations have not been checked. The original boards are heavily rubbed, and the spine was later replaced in smooth leather lettered in gilt. On May 6th, 1883, the year it was printed, Clement C. Dickey gave it to Miss Breckenridge as a present from a friend.