The Bride of Lammermoor
Bride of Lammermoor, The,a novel by Sir W. Scott , published 1819 in Tales of My Landlord , 3rd series. The darkness and fatalism of this novel, published in the third series of Tales of My Landlord, have traditionally been ascribed to Scott's almost mortal illness while he was writing it, as have minor confusions in the plot; but recent research shows that most of it was written earlier. The pessimistic tone of what has been described as the most pure and powerful of his tragedies remains unexplained. The dramatic possibilities of the story of Lucy Ashton's frustrated love for the Byronic Master of Ravenswood, her stabbing of the alternative bridegroom forced upon her on the wedding night, and her own insanity and death, were to be seized on by Donizetti for his opera Lucia di Lammermoor. The comic interest in the novel is provided by Ravenswood's henchman Caleb Balderstone, though Scott admitted that, in his...
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