Kenilworth: A Romance

Walter Scott

University Press, 1993 - Fiction - 541 pages

The tragic story of the secret marriage of Amy Robsart to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite and potential consort of the Queen, is imbued with the drama of Tudor England, its exuberance of spirit, vigor of language, violence and treachery, ostentation and gaiety, shifts and stratagems, and above all, its pervading sense of transience. Steeped in and engrossed by historic England, Scott relished the opportunity to create a pageant of Elizabethan life. From the swashbuckling Lambourne to the Machiavellian Varney, from the vacillating Leicester to Amy and the Queen herself, Scott grasps something of the passions of Marlowe, the histrionics of Kyd and the cynicism of Marston. Kenilworth comes as close to the theatrical and the melodramatic as Rob Roy or The Bride of Lammermoor, and Scott's sheer zest in writing is there for any reader to enjoy.

About the author

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 15, 1771. He began his literary career by writing metrical tales. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and The Lady of the Lake made him the most popular poet of his day. Sixty-five hundred copies of The Lay of the Last Minstrel were sold in the first three years, a record sale for poetry. His other poems include The Vision of Don Roderick, Rokeby, and The Lord of the Isles. He then abandoned poetry for prose. In 1814, he anonymously published a historical novel, Waverly, or, Sixty Years Since, the first of the series known as the Waverley novels. He wrote 23 novels anonymously during the next 13 years. The first master of historical fiction, he wrote novels that are historical in background rather than in character: A fictitious person always holds the foreground. In their historical sequence, the Waverley novels range in setting from the year 1090, the time of the First Crusade, to 1700, the period covered in St. Roman's Well (1824), set in a Scottish watering place. His other works include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, and The Bride of Lammermoor. He died on September 21, 1832.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Kenilworth: A Romance; Volume 11 of Edinburgh edition of the Waverley novels, Walter Scott Walter Scott Ed.-in-chief David Hewitt; Volume 11 of Waverley novels, Walter Scott
• Author: Walter Scott
• Editor: John H. Alexander
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: University Press, 1993
• ISBN: 0231084722, 9780231084727
• Length: 541 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / General; Fiction / Historical / General; Fiction / Literary; Literary Criticism / General