The provost (Oxford English novels)

Galt, John. The Provost. Edited with an Introduction by Ian A. Gordon. London and others, Oxford University Press, 1973. 21cm x 13.3cm. xxii, 170 pages. Original Hardcover with original dustjacket in protective collector's mylar. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Endpaper with name of preowner. Interesting newspaper-clipping on john Galt loosely inserted: The theoretical histories of John Galt. [Oxford English Novels - General Editor: James Kinsley]. Includes for Example: The Forecast/ The Guildry/ The First Contested Election/ The Failure of Bailie McLucre/ The Bribe/ An Execution/ A Riot/ Policy/ The Spy/ The Meal Mob/ The Second Provostry/ The Improvement of the Streets/ The Repair of the Kirk/ The Law Plea/ The Suppression of the Fairs/ The Volunteering/ The Clothing/ The Press-Gang/ The Wig Dinner/ The Bailie's Head/ Retribution/ Tests of Success/ The Duel/ An Interlocutor/ The School-House Scheme/ Benefits of Neutrality/ The New Member/ My Third Provostry/ The Church Vacant/ The Stramash in the Council/ The New Counsellors/ The Resignation etc. With Select Bibliography and a Chronology of John Galt. First published in 1882. Set in eighteenth-century Scotland. A tightly-constructed, self-revealing memoir of a small-town politician. The novel combines a Defoe-like precision of detail with an imaginative conception of the central character. The book goes far beyond comedy; it is a subtle and ironic study of the professional manipulator, and one of the earliest political novels. This edition is fully annotated with linguistic and explanatory notes. In particular, Galt's faithful realism in period details is illustrated from the unpublished eighteenth-century Minute Books of the Town Council of the Royal Burgh of Irvine, Galt's birthplace; and so the actual, as well as the imagined, settled for the story.