Reading Order
Old Mortality Reading Order
Old Mortality (1816) by Walter Scott is his darkest and most politically complex novel — the story of Henry Morton, a moderate young Scotsman who becomes entangled in the Covenanting rising of 1679 (the Killing Time, when Covenanters who refused to accept the episcopalian church settlement were hunted, executed, or exiled), and who finds himself caught between the fanaticism of the extreme Covenanters (especially the preacher Burley, who has committed an assassination in the name of God) and the brutal repression of Claverhouse's royal dragoons. Scott's subject is religious civil war and the costs of ideological commitment — he had no particular sympathy with the Covenanters, but he admired their courage and understood their grievances, and the novel refuses to make the conflict simple. Burley is one of Scott's most powerful characterizations: a fanatic of genuine spiritual intensity, a murderer who believes himself justified, a man of real courage and real cruelty. Claverhouse (Graham of Claverhouse, Bonny Dundee) is equally complex: an elegant, cultivated man of enormous personal charm who orders executions with the same calm he brings to everything. Morton navigates between them, trying to act for justice and moderation in a world where moderation is not permitted. The novel is less immediately appealing than Ivanhoe or Waverley but is widely considered Scott's most serious and intellectually ambitious work.
Where to start
Old Mortality (1816) — the Edinburgh Edition is the definitive text; the Oxford World's Classics edition edited by Angus Calder (1975; 2009) is the best edition for general readers, with the essential notes on Covenanting history. The Penguin Classics edition edited by Douglas Mack (1985; 2001) is also recommended. Prior knowledge of Scottish Covenanting history helps; a brief encyclopaedia article on the Killing Time will make the novel's political world immediately legible.
Complete Old Mortality Book List
- 1Buy
Old Mortality (Oxford World's Classics)
Walter Scott (ed. Angus Calder)·2009·The best edition for general readers — Calder's introduction is the most accessible account of the Covenanting history and the novel's complex moral structure; the notes explain the historical figures (Claverhouse, Archbishop Sharp) without overwhelming the reading. - 2Buy
The Heart of Midlothian
Walter Scott·1818·The companion novel in the Covenanting tradition — Jeanie Deans's background is directly rooted in the tradition Old Mortality describes; reading the two together gives the fullest picture of what Scott thought the Covenanting tradition represented in Scottish history. - 3Buy
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg·1824·The companion text from Hogg — Wringhim's antinomianism is the nightmarish extreme of the theological tradition Scott depicts in Burley; reading Old Mortality and the Confessions together traces the full range of Scottish Calvinist literature. - 4Buy
John Galt: Annals of the Parish
John Galt·1821·The companion work in Scottish regional fiction — Galt's novel of a parish minister's fifty-year memoir is the gentler, more comic version of the Presbyterian Scotland that Scott depicts in extremis; together they show the range of early nineteenth-century Scottish fiction. - 5Buy
Waverley
Walter Scott·1814·Read first to establish Scott's historical method — Old Mortality uses the same approach (the moderate young hero between two extreme parties) but with greater moral complexity and darker emotional force; understanding how the method works in Waverley prepares you for its more demanding deployment here.
Old Mortality — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Old Mortality by Walter Scott about?
Old Mortality (1816) by Walter Scott is set during the Covenanting rising of 1679 in Scotland — the period when Presbyterian Covenanters who refused to accept episcopalian church government were hunted, imprisoned, and executed under Charles II's government. Henry Morton, a moderate young Scotsman, becomes entangled in the rising when he helps a fugitive Covenanter, and must navigate between the fanaticism of the extreme Covenanters (especially the murderous Burley) and the brutal efficiency of the royal dragoons under Claverhouse. The novel is Scott's most sustained exploration of religious civil war and the costs of ideological commitment.
What is 'Old Mortality' in the title of Scott's novel?
'Old Mortality' in the title of Walter Scott's novel (1816) refers to a character in the novel's frame narrative — an old man named Robert Paterson who spent his life travelling Scotland cleaning and repairing the gravestones of Covenanting martyrs killed during the Killing Time. The fictional narrator Jedediah Cleishbotham claims to have heard Morton's story from Old Mortality, and the frame suggests that the whole novel is an act of historical memory — the recovery of a buried past from the old man who kept those graves legible. Old Mortality himself is based on a real historical figure, a Covenanting gravestone cleaner whom Scott had heard about in his youth.
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