My Aunt Margaret's Mirror

Sir Walter Scott opens with a memory-laden frame in which a childhood fireside tale is recalled by an elderly kinswoman whose superstition gives it uncanny authority. As the narrator walks toward Aunt Margaret's house, he passes vanished fields, old landmarks, and the graves of brothers, feeling the weight of family decline, lost fortune, and the persistence of memory in places that outlast generations. Aunt Margaret herself emerges as the indispensable household guardian, a woman who has long served as nurse, disciplinarian, and surrogate mother, and who now preserves the past in conversation, politics, and ghost stories. She defends superstition as a natural companion to age, especially when reason cannot ease grief. Her tale turns to Sir Philip Forester, a brilliant, selfish man whose charm conceals moral recklessness, and to Lady Forester, the unhappy Jemmie Falconer, trapped in a loveless marriage and left to suffer his indifference. When Sir Philip departs for Flanders, Lady Forester is consumed by uncertainty, clinging to scraps of news while rumors of his fate multiply. At last, desperate for truth, she resolves to consult the mysterious Paduan doctor Baptista Damiotti, who is said to possess the power to reveal the fate of the absent. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.