Waverley Or 'Tis Sixty Years Since Author:Sir Walter Scott The Rebellion of 1745, when the Highland clans of Scotland rallied to support Charles Stuart, Pretender to the throne of England, forms the dramatic background to Waverley. Its hero, Edward Waverley, is a young man of divided loyalties, gallant but naive, and thirsting for high romance. Won over to the Stuart cause, he encounters the adventure h... more »e seeks, but amid a steadily mounting tempo of action and intrigue, he also comes to learn the stern realities of love, warfare, and politics. Remarkable for its descriptions of the Scottish Highlands and for its host of superbly varied character portraits, Waverley stands as Sir Walter Scott's first great historical novel; it represents both the prototype of a major literary genre and an enduring triumph of storytelling art. As Edgar Johnson writes: "It is a mistake to think of Scott primarily as a historical romancer. He is not interested in tin armor and cardboard battlements...A gifted historian he assuredly is...But he is above all a novelist, outstanding in his talent for dramatic narrative and penetrating in the vivid and accurate portrayal of human nature."« less