John Galt was among the most popular and prolific Scottish writers of the nineteenth century. He wrote in a panoply of forms and genres about a great variety of topics and settings, drawing on his experiences of living, working, and travelling in Scotland and England, in Europe and the Mediterranean, and in North America. Yet only a fraction of his many works have been reprinted since their original publication. In 1841–43 Galt's most important publisher, Blackwood, reprinted seven of his novels in volumes 1, 2, 4, and 6 of the Blackwood's Standard Novels series. In 1895, the Blackwood firm republished these novels, with one change to the selection, as the eight-volume Works of John Galt; this collection was reissued in 1936, again with one additional novel. Modern annotated editions of some individual works have appeared since then. However, the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of John Galt presents for the first time a much fuller range of Galt's fiction in authoritative texts, together with materials that add to an appreciation of his historical surroundings and his cultural heritage. Each volume includes an introduction that places Galt's work in the context of history, genre, and the print culture of the period; annotations that explain specialised vocabulary as well as historical, geographical, literary, cultural, and philosophical allusions; and other features such as a glossary of Scots words and expressions, maps, and excerpts that illuminate Galt's sources and his contemporary reception.

Galt wrote and published his work quickly, sending portions of manuscript to the printer to be set in type as soon as he finished them; he and his publisher would frequently correct proofs of part of a text while he continued writing the remainder. Although he was usually busy with several projects at once, his correspondence documents his involvement in all stages of the publication process and shows that he undertook proof-corrections himself, except in cases where he developed especially close working relationships with a publisher or fellow writer and allowed that person editorial control. However, with few exceptions, no manuscripts or proofs of Galt's published fiction have survived. For many of his works, only a single edition appeared during his lifetime. Sometimes there were one or more further editions, lightly revised and corrected; in other cases, the text was originally published in a periodical and then revised for publication in book form.