1745. The year of the final Jacobite uprising. Edward Waverley, a naïve, aristocratic English soldier is posted to Dundee as part of the Hanoverian army. He takes leave to visit the castle of his uncle’s Jacobite friend, Baron Bradwardine, in the lowlands of Scotland. Wild Highlanders visit the castle, and curiosity gets the better of Waverley. He travels north into the Scottish Highlands and the heart of the Jacobite rebellion and its aftermath. Our hero finds himself caught between the Jacobite clans and the Hanoverian regime, and between two women – the feisty Flora MacIvor, sister of the clan chief, and the Baron’s quiet, demure daughter Rose. This edition of Sir Walter Scott’s classic novel of history and romance has been expertly reworked for modern audiences by Jenni Calder.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. Wilfred of Ivanhoe is a Saxon loyal to the Norman king Richard I. Because of this loyalty, and his love for Lady Rowena, Ivanhoe is cast out by his father, a Saxon loyalist determined to liberate the Saxon people from Norman rule. He plans to marry Rowena, his ward and a descendant of the Saxon king Alfred, to Lord Aethelstane, pretender to the throne of England. In so doing, Ivanhoe would unite two rival Saxon houses in their claim for the crown. Ivanhoe returns from the Crusades in secret and is joined in his plans to re-establish Richard on the thrown by the moneylender Isaac of York, his daughter Rebecca, the mysterious Black Knight, Lady Rowena, and Robin Hood and his merry men.

A special hardback edition of David Purdie's controversial adaptation of Scott's classic historical novel. Ivanhoe follows Wilfred of Ivanhoe, part of one of the few Saxon families at a time when English nobility was dominated by the Normans, who is out of favour with his father for his allegiance to the Norman king, Richard the Lionheart. The gripping storyline beautifully captures the 12th century tensions between Saxons and Normans, Nobility and Commonality and Jews and Gentiles, with a whole host of well-known characters from Robin Hood to Friar Tuck.

The author of Ivanhoe contributed other books to the hallowed halls of literature and one of the classics of his writing is Old Mortality, a book worth taking the time to sit down and read.