Valerius, A Roman Story

The first critical edition of the final text of Lockhart’s Valerius, A Roman Story A critically-edited text with full scholarly apparatus Includes a comprehensive introduction that addresses the composition of the novel, the novel’s literary and historical contexts, and the novel’s critical reception Features extensive explanatory notes that identify quotations within the novel, the novel’s literary, historical, political, cultural, and geographical references, and other key expressions Includes textual notes addressing Lockhart’s revisions based on the extant manuscripts and proofs Valerius, A Roman Story , Lockhart’s first novel and what has been called ‘the first classical novel in English’, was first published in 1821 and extensively revised for Blackwood’s Standard Novels (1842) two decades later. This revised edition – Lockhart’s final edition – is the text presented in this new scholarly edition. The title character, a young Roman Briton, narrates and reflects upon his journey to Rome in the time of Trajan. The novel is part history, part travel narrative, part love story and part thriller, as Valerius’s personal journey is carefully interwoven with the history, culture, and politics of the Roman Empire in a time of Christian persecution. Lockhart offers Romantic fiction a new character and invites readers to consider conditions of nineteenth-century Britain through Roman life. This edition, with its extensive explanatory notes, provides the modern reader with the scholarly resources to re-evaluate Valerius and Lockhart’s place in the history of the Scottish novel and Romantic fiction.