This critical edition of Scott's Minstrelsy presents a seminal 19th-century work for a 21st-century audience. This 3-volume edition of Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3) presents nearly 100 poems and songs, many of them containing fascinating narratives of death, murder and abductions. It also includes his extended essays on history and the supernatural, in which Scott gives the background to the ballad narratives - opening up a window into the life of the Scottish Borders around 1800. The Edinburgh edition presents Scott's original text in a new critical way and tells the stories behind the stories, naming the sources and singers, identifying places and bringing alive the cultural background. For the first time, the extraordinary vitality of the Scottish culture and narratives in the Borders is brought to light through the publication of this iconic text in Scotland's cultural memory. It presents the first modern critical edition of Scott's ballads and songs. It provides insight into the oral and the literate culture of Scotland at a critical point of transition between the two.It reveals the roots of Scott's impact on Romantic perceptions and on the creation of an imagined Scotland.

It shows the dynamic of Scott's development from 1802 to 1812, between his earliest attempts at poetry and the appearance of his novels. It settles the question of authenticity: identifies the relationship of Scott's published versions of each ballad to the sources and parallels available to Scott, mainly in manuscript.