John Galt - Collected Works of John Galt

The Collected Works of

JOHN GALT

(1779-1839)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2018

Version 1

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The Collected Works of

JOHN GALT

By Delphi Classics, 2018

Collected Works of John Galt

First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2018.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 9781788779203

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Hastings, East Sussex

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The building on the High Street, Irvine, Ayrshire, where Galt was born on 2 May 1779

A modern view of Irvine High Street

OR, MACDONALDS AND CAMPBELLS

Before turning to novel writing in his late twenties, Galt had already penned several works of political commentary, poetry, travel writing and biography. He had also begun to train as a lawyer and had travelled widely in Europe in company with Lord Byron.

Glenfell was published in one volume in January 1820 and is a story of contemporary social life in Edinburgh. It was part of a series entitled The Circulating Library, which aimed to provide middle-class readers with morally-respectable fiction. Hence, Galts anonymous preface, which proclaims his intention of avoiding social satire in favour of a gentle moralizing vein and the adoption of a becoming gravity in his story of Edinburgh life.

Title page of the first edition

St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, in the late eighteenth century

OR, AN EDINBURGH TALE

OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

A plague on both your houses.

Shakespeare.

I N THE FOLLOWING tale our Readers are called upon to believe, that it has been our object to touch the various pathetic incidents developed in the progress of the work, with all the affecting sentiments so beautifully characteristic of the tender passion in the present enlightened age, and to avoid, by a skilful selection of the most elegant occurrences, in the vicissitudes of that high state of society which we have undertaken to describe, every thing that is not of the most refined and exquisite quality. For we hold in great contempt all those who have, of late years, given but too much encouragement to a class of authors that presume to think novels and romances may be made the vehicles of agreeable historical information, combined with descriptions of character, which show so little invention, that they are, by the most competent judges, considered almost as portraits of particular living persons.

And to mark, indeed, how decidedly we differ in opinion from them, we have only alluded, and that in the most distant and delicate manner, to the social festivals which, during the winter, are so illustrative of the general state of society in Edinburgh; taking care to enter into none of those details which might lead the reader to imagine that we regarded them as peculiarly marking the manners and expedients of any class or individuals. In short we have been governed by a liberal philosophy in our little comedy of northern errors, and neither general nor particular satire entered into the scope of our plan. Ambitious of offering to the world a work pregnant with instruction, we have, throughout preserved a becoming gravity. It would ill have suited that gentle moralizing vein which we feel to be the predominant quality of our genius, to have chosen any other style than the calm and dignified, which we have throughout endeavoured to support, and we trust not without success.