Overview

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.

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9781399553537

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Reviews

This meticulous edition of John Gibson Lockhart’s first published novel abounds with intrigue, romance, manufactured enmity, and the spread of disinformation. Set in a vivid Roman past, it is a crucial contribution to what Alan Montgomery has recently identified as a Scottish fascination with the richness of Roman antiquarianism. -- Sharon Alker, Whitman College

Author Information

Thomas C. Richardson is Professor of English Emeritus at Mississippi University for Women. He is the editor of Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair and The History of Matthew Wald in the Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of John Gibson Lockhart, as well as the two-volume edition of James Hogg’s Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in the Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg.

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