The Talisman (Easton Press Collector's Edition)

A$80 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

SCOTT, Sir Walter (intro. Thomas Caldecot Chubb; illus. Federico Castellon). The Talisman. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 1976. Large Octavo. Full brown leather. Spine with raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page marker. xxv, [iii], 369 pp., including author's notes and glossary. Colour frontispiece and multiple illustrations by Federico Castellon throughout. Collector's Edition. Part of the "100 Greatest Books Ever Written" series. Among the earliest Easton Press productions. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) published The Talisman in 1825 as the second of his Tales of the Crusaders, and it has remained one of his most consistently readable and widely enjoyed novels despite the general decline of his broader reputation. Set in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade of 1190, it follows Sir Kenneth of the Leopard, a Scottish knight in the army of Richard I of England, whose encounter with a mysterious Arab physician named Adonbec el Hakim sets in motion a sequence of events touching honour, treachery, and the complex relationship between two great adversaries — Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria — who are presented here not as enemies but as the two most chivalrous figures in a world that falls short of chivalry on every other side. The identity of Adonbec el Hakim is revealed in the novel's course, and the revelation is the pivot on which Scott's meditation on honour turns. Richard, rash and im

• Binding: Hardcover

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