Tales of My Landlord, Collected and Arranged by Jedediah Cleishbotham, Schoolmaster and Parish-Clerk of Gandercleugh

Edinburgh: Printed for William Blackwood, 1816 Four volumes. First edition, first printing, bound with the half-titles. Finely bound by Carss of Glasgow in contemporary three-quarter tan calf and spotted tan paper boards, spines stamped in gilt, red and blue marbled text block edges, plain white endpapers. Very good with some toning to extremities, light edgewear, a bit of cracking to spine surfaces, slightly tender joints (particularly front joint of Volume I), light rubbing to boards, minor fading to text block edges, some offsetting to endpapers, contemporary ownership bookplates to front pastedowns, and a scratch to spine of Volume IV. Overall, a solid set with clean and tight interiors. Todd & Bowden 98Aa. These four volumes comprise the first installment of the Tales of My Landlord series, a subset of Scott's Waverley novels. The series, intended to highlight life in different Scottish regions, was published under Scott's pseudonym Jedediah Cleishbotham the "Schoolmaster and Parish-clerk of Gandercleugh" and purported to be a collection of tales from the landlord of the fictional Wallace Inn at Gandercleugh, who was said to have sent them to Cleishbotham for editing and arrangement. The first series of Tales of My Landlord contains the historical novels The Black Dwarf and Old Morality. In The Black Dwarf, Scott tells the story of the dwarfed Sir Edward Mauley amidst the first Jacobite uprisings after the 1707 union of England and Scotland. Old Morality explores the religious turmoil and rebellions of the 1670s and 1680s through the Glorious Revolution of 1688.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good.