The Siege of Malta is one of Scott's most moving works. The story of the Siege itself is remarkable, with its combination of individual defeat and group survival against overwhelming odds. It had been part of Scott's mental furniture from his early days, and it acquires a new and powerful resonance when remembered alongside his then-failing health. To read it is an enlarging experience, which anyone at all interested in Scott should share. The incomplete narrative of Bizarro is also a fascinating document from the end of Scott's life. In it he returns to the figure of the bandit/outlaw which had intrigued him all his life and had played such an important part in two of his greatest novels, in the persons of Rob Roy himself in Rob Roy and Robin Hood in Ivanhoe.
* The only available editions of these two works by Scott * Provides reading texts that remain broadly faithful to the manuscripts, but tidying them up in the way that the original intermediaries might have been expected to do * Diplomatic transcriptions, which involves attempting to reproduce the manuscripts as faithfully as possible in type, using appropriate conventions to indicate deletions and doubtful readings * Access to a digital reproduction of the manuscripts on an accompanying CD * An Essay on the Text that outlines its genesis and composition, describing the manuscripts, and presenting and illustrating the procedures involved in preparing the reading text * A Historical Note and set of Explanatory Notes along with a combined Glossary * Accompanying CD-rom containing digital photographs of the manuscripts.