The History of Matthew Wald

Between 1821 and 1824 John Gibson Lockhart published four novels: only Adam Blair has been regularly reprinted. The History of Matthew Wald (1824), his other Scottish novel, is a gripping Gothic tale which can be compared with William Godwin_s or Charles Brockden Brown_s fiction. Walter Scott, Lockhart_s father-in-law, praised the »power» of this novel. Though there is some social comedy à la Galt in Matthew Wald, Lockhart is more concerned with Scotland as a spiritual and psychological environment than with social detail. He focuses on the hero_s mental torment, summing up the plot dynamics by saying, in a review article of his own novel, that »everything is decidedly and entirely subordinate to the minute and anxious, although easy and unaffected, anatomy of one man_s mind». Matthew_s plight can be seen as an emblem of Scotland_s unstable cultural identity in the Romantic period. Together with an introduction this edition provides explanatory notes, a bibliography, a chronology of J.G. Lockhart, a note on the text and a glossary of Scots words.