The most haunting and Shakespearean of Sir Water Scott’s novels, The Bride of Lammermoor is a fast-paced tragedy set in late seventeenth-century Scotland. The book opens as Lord Ravenswood dies in a furious rage, deprived of his title and removed from his estate by a clever lawyer, Sir William Ashton.

          His son, the Master of Ravenswood, inherits his father’s bitterness against Ashton, and lives in his family’s sole remaining homestead, the ruined tower of Wolf’s Crag. But when Ravenswood falls in love with Ashton’s daughter, the shy, beautiful Lucy, her diabolical mother takes extreme measures to thwart the match.

          Lady Ashton forces her daughter to marry another man, the Laird of Bucklaw, and Lucy agrees, despairing that her true love has abandoned her. When Ravenswood reappears directly after the wedding, he flies into a fury and challenges Lucy’s husband and brother to duels. That same night, Lucy stabs Bucklaw and dies soon after. Ravenswood, rushing to meet his erstwhile opponents, dies as well, swallowed by quicksand.

          A story of immense, gloomy power, infused with unforgiving spirit and loneliness of the Scottish Isles, The Bride of Lammermoor’s somber tone is relieved by the comic effect of Ravenswood’s elderly butler, Caleb Baldertsone, and his increasingly desperate and ridiculous attempts to rehabilitate the family’s name.