Showing results for "Scott Adams" in Classics

Jonathan Oldbuck, the antiquary of the title, has a passion for the past–and delights in trying to convey it. He meets the mysteriously taciturn young Lovel and the two strike up a friendship, bonding over Roman ruins. When Lovel falls for Isabella, daughter of a local landowner, it looks like an impossible situation. Sharp, funny, gothic, romantic, and full of action, this is a thoroughly entertaining window on Scottish life in the summer of 1794: it was Scott’s intention to show the spirit of the times, and how the past affects the present–and it was his own favourite of all his novels.

Anthony Patch is the idle heir to a vast fortune. His wife, Gloria, dazzles society with her good looks. Satisfied by privilege and beauty alone, they are beholden only to the "magnificent attitude of not giving a damn." When Anthony’s inheritance is withheld, it causes an irreparable rift in their marriage, threatening their fragile paradise. Oblivious to their future, he and Gloria have little left to define themselves but their ever-receding pasts.

Best known today for his comic masterpiece, Vanity Fair, W. M. Thackeray was regarded in his time as the only rival to his contemporary, Charles Dickens. This collection includes a selection of his finest satirical fiction, as well as two fascinating programmes exploring his life and writings.