Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0395051789, Paperback)

The Heart of Mid-Lothian, set between the two Jacobean insurrections in 1736 and during the Porteous Riots, marks the peak of its author's achievement; many consider it to be Scott's national epic.

Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0748605703, Hardcover)

The Heart of Mid-Lothian is precisely focused on the murder trials of John Porteous and Effie Deans in 1736 and 1737. Scott's chronicle spans the eighty years of David Dean's life. A complex and challenging narrative that acutely raises the problem of a judicial system that does not produce justice. Placed within its immediate political context, history is represented through the life of the Deans, accompanied by the justice of Providence as perceived by his daughter Jeanie, the greatest of Scott's heroines.

This edition of The Heart of Mid-Lothian provides a new text established in accordance with the tired policies and practices of the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. Its annotation comprehensively treats the novel's historical, legal, religious and cultural sources.

The Heart of Mid-Lothian is precisely focused on the trials for murder of John Porteous and of Effie Deans in 1736 and 1737. Yet it is Scott's only chronicle, spanning the eighty years of the life of David Deans, whose death takes place in 1751. It is the most complex of all Scott's narratives. It is also the most challenging in that it raises in an acute fashion the problem of a judicial system that does not produce justice, and places it within not just the immediate political context, but within history as represented by the life of Deans, and the justice of Providence as perceived by his daughter Jeanie, the greatest of Scott's heroines.