Details

Title

Rob Roy

Author

Scott, Sir Walter

Publisher

Crowell

Donor

Scans provided by and used with permission of Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph Library. From the L.M. Montgomery Collection.

Note

It is hard to overstate the influence of Sir Walter Scott on L.M. Montgomery. Montgomery read, re-read, commented on, alluded to, or cited Scott throughout her life and throughout her own work. This volume, perhaps the first edition of ‘Rob Roy’ she owned herself, was inscribed in November of 1906, but she noted in her autobiographical essay, ‘The Alpine Path’ that along with Dickens’ ‘Pickwick Papers’ and Bulwer Lytton’s ‘Zanoni,’ ‘Rob Roy’ was the only other novel in the house when she grew up. Montgomery was once asked to answer the question, “What are the greatest Books in the English language?” She answered that it would be easier to come up with a list of “twenty novels I like most” but “when you ask me to name the six favorites, you put me in the position of the mother of ten children who is asked which three she loves best. She could not tell you and neither can I.” However, she rises to the task. She narrows to six based on the books whose characters are, to her, “more intensely alive and real than in any others.” Her list? 1. David Copperfield. 2. Pickwick Papers. 3. The Mill on the Floss. 4. Vanity Fair. 5. Jane Eyre, and 6. Rob Roy (see “What are the greatest Books in the English language?” in ‘The L.M. Montgomery Reader Vol. One: A Life in Print,’ ed. Lefebvre, p. 152). Scott’s highly romanticized version of the life of the Scottish folk hero, pops up again and again. Montgomery cites or mentions it in ‘Anne of Green Gables’ (1908), ‘The Story Girl (1911), ‘Emily of New Moon’ (1923), ‘Magic for Marigold (1929), and in ‘Jane of Lantern Hill’ (1937). The clippings she left in this volume reflect that re-reading, as there are unrelated postcards and a variety of snippets and essays included from various magazines or newspapers. In 1908, when she was rereading many of Scott’s novels, Montgomery told her journal, “Splendid old Scott! His magic never fails. After a surfeit of glittering, empty, modern fiction I always come back to him as to some tried old journal who never fails to charm. What a delight the few novels of Scott which I could get to read in early life were to me! There was one around the house–an old paper-bound Rob Roy–over which I pored until I read it to pieces …To me, Scott’s novels are blent with the brightest memories of those old days and so have the added charm of old associations” (‘The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, The PEI Years,’ 1901–1911, p. 203).

Genre

novel