Four Galt Novels: Annals of the Parish, the Ayrshire Legatees, the Provost, the Entail

John Galt (1779-1839) has been described as the first political novelist in the English language. This edition is a development of the collection – published in 2001 by the Saltire Society in Edinburgh – which brought together the three early works ‘Annals of the Parish’ (1821), ‘The Ayrshire Legatees’ (1821) and ‘The Provost’ (1822). To these characteristic, and very successful, shorter novels – set in the rural Scotland of the late eighteenth century, as agricultural society was giving way to the new industrial growth – is now added ‘The Entail’ (1823), a full-length masterpiece. As Ian Campbell explains, in his new Introduction, the longer work has been added to give the reader an opportunity to appreciate fully the extent of Galt’s talent as he develops his comic and constructional abilities to handle a longer plot, a larger cast of characters – and a splendid palette of language.