The contents of the present volumes are extracted from a very voluminous publication, printed at Edinburgh, entitled Balantyne's Novelist's Library. This work, of which several volumes have already appeared, will contain all the British and Foreign standard Novels and Romances. To the productions of each author are prefixed a biographical notice and critical analysis from the pen of Sir Walter Scott. We are led to hope that the republication alone of the biographical notices and critical remarks upon works of fiction, by so great a master in the art as Sir Walter Scott, cannot fail of being favourably received. Anticipating that success, which, considering the universal interest excited by every emanation from one of the most largely gifted minds of the age, we shall reprint the remainder of the lives and critiques as soon as there shall appear a sufficient number to form another volume. We beg leave to suggest that these productions of Sir Walter Scott, thus attainable at a trifling expence, cannot be obtained in England but by purchasing the whole collection of the Novelist's Library. |