Count Robert of Paris, condemned by Scott's printer as "altogether a failure," was later prepared for publication by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, and his publisher Robert Cadell. What appeared was a bowdlerized, tamed and tidied version of what Scott had written and dictated. This edition, the first to have returned to the manuscript and to the many surviving proofs, realises Scott's original intentions. Scott's last full novel has many roughnesses, but it also challenges the susceptibilities of his readers more directly than any other and in that lay its fault in the eyes of the lesser men who condemned it.

"By our Lady of the Broken Lances," said the Crusader. "I would not that the Turks were more coureous than they are Christian, and am well pleased that unbeliever and heathen hound are a proper description for the best of them..." -from Count Robert of Paris They were the literary phenomenon of their time: The Waverly novels, 48 volumes set in fanciful re-creations of the Scottish Highlands (and other lands) of centuries past, published between 1814 and 1831 and devoured by a reading public hungry for these sweeping, interconnected melodramas. The series popularized historical fiction, though they're also abundant in astute political and social commentary. Count Robert of Paris, Volume 46 of Waverly, is part of the fourth and final series in Scott's Tales of My Landlord. Ranging over the Near East, this is a tale of adventure and romance set during the first Crusades in the late 11th century. Scottish novelist and poet SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832), a literary hero of his native land, turned to writing only when his law practice and printing business foundered. Among his most beloved works are The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rob Roy (1818), and Ivanhoe (Waverly Vols. 16 and 17) (1820).

События исторического романа Вальтера Скотта разворачиваются во время похода первых крестоносцев, совпавшего со временем правления византийского императора Алексея Комненуса. Необдуманный поступок графа Роберта накануне Крестового Похода навлекает на него множество бедствий, заставив вступить на путь мщения и подвигов. Что окажется важнее – оскорбленное достоинство или спасение любви? Ярко воссозданные нравы и атмосфера того далекого времени и захватывающий сюжет не оставят равнодушным ни одного поклонника героического Средневековья.