[Scott, Sir Walter.]. THE MONASTERY. A ROMANCE. By the Author of "Waverley" . Edinburgh: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, Booksellers to the King, Edinburgh, 1820. 12mo, three volumes: [1-2] [1] 2-331 [332: blank]; [1-2] [1-3] 4-333 [334: blank]; [1-2] [1-3] 4-351 [352: blank], nineteenth-century three-quarter calf and marbled boards, spine panels lettered and tooled in gold and blind. First edition. Novel of 16th century Scotland, in which the White Lady, a benign banshee-type figure, plays a role. "Scott's extensive debt to the Gothic tradition is highly visible in THE MONASTERY... The business of the white lady is no longer the simple Gothic function of haunting, appalling, or startling. She is a bringer of life and new values where all hope has vanished." - Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 1-342. "Walter Freye [The Influence of Gothic Literature on Walter Scott, 1902] has attempted to show that Scott raised the Gothic novel from its decadence and made dry history live again in his tales." - Varma, The Gothic Flame, p. 83. "Scott is important to any inquiry into the supernatural genre because he worked more assiduously with traditional folk sources than did his many imitators. While he never penned a Gothic novel or a tale about vampires or werewolves, he made significant contributions to the marvelous in literature through his finely crafted short tales about the uncanny and through his role as a critic of the genre." - James L. Campbell, Jr., Bleiler, ed., Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and Horror, p. 169. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1453. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 845. Frank, The First Gothics 391. Tymn (ed), Horror Literature 1-342. Wilson, Shadows in the Attic, p. 443. Bleiler (1978), p. 176. Not in Reginald (1979; 1992). NCBEL III 674. Printed book labels of "Captn Colin Campbell R. N. / Ardpatrick" affixed to the paste-down of each volume. Half title leaves not present. Spine ends chipped, boards rubbed, hairline cracks to several outer joints, still a tight, internally clean set. (#109439)