Guy Mannering

by Sir Walter Scott Book 2 in the Waverley Novels series.

First published 1815

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3.5(39)

Harry Bertram, heir to the Ellangowan estate, is kidnapped as a child by the smuggler Dirk Hatteraick at the instigation of the corrupt lawyer Gilbert Glossin. Raised in the Netherlands as Vanbeest Brown, he later serves in India under Colonel Guy Mannering and falls in love with Mannering’s daughter Julia. A duel and misunderstanding separate them, but Brown follows Julia back to Britain and unknowingly approaches the country and family from which he was taken.

In Galloway, the dispossessed Bertram is recognised by Meg Merrilies, the Traveller woman who once cared for him and remembers the conspiracy that destroyed his inheritance. Glossin and Hatteraick attempt to silence both claimant and witnesses, while Mannering’s astrological prediction appears to close around the young man’s return. The novel combines smuggling, disputed property and service in British India with a restoration plot shaped by memory, prejudice and the evidence preserved by marginalised communities.