Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2020
Summary
Genesis of the Novel
John Gibson Lockhart's novel Some Passages in the Life of Mr Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle was first published in February 1822 by William Blackwood in Edinburgh and T. Cadell in London. The novel was substantially revised for a second edition, which appeared in January 1824 and was also published by Blackwood and Cadell. The second edition is Lockhart's final version of the novel and serves as the copy text for the present edition, emended to correct printing errors. The second edition of 1824 was the copy text for the re-publication of the work in a volume with Lockhart’s final novel, The History of Matthew Wald (1824), in the Blackwood’s Standard Novels series, which first appeared in 1843 and was reprinted several times thereafter. The 1843 edition corrected some printing errors from the second edition but otherwise was not revised.
Adam Blair is the second of Lockhart's four novels, all published anonymously over a period of four years, 1821 to 1824. Adam Blair is widely regarded as Lockhart's best novel, and it is certainly his novel that has consistently attracted the most interest among readers— partly because of the quality of the writing, but also partly because of the daring treatment of a controversial subject. Adam Blair, set in a rural parish in the west of Scotland in the second half of the eighteenth century, is the story of a highly-respected, if somewhat naïve, Church of Scotland minister, who, several months after the death of his wife, has a sexual relationship one night with a married woman—a relationship that has tragic consequences for both Blair and his partner and that sets the course of the life of Blair’s daughter.The novel provides one of the earliest serious character studies in fiction of a minister in Scottish society, exploring the place of the minister within the community, the expectations of parishioners, the impact of the minister's indiscretion on the parish and the larger Church of Scotland organisation, and more broadly, the nature of social relationships, the challenge of balancing moral codes with human nature and desire, and the difficulty—and power—of achieving forgiveness.
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- Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020