Sir Walter Scott was a master of diverse talents. He was a man of letters, a dedicated historian and historiographer, a well-read translator of foreign texts, and a talented poet. Deriving most of his material from his native Scotland, its history and its legends, Scott invented and mastered what we know today as the historical novel. The Betrothed is one of the works in this volume in which Scott characterizes the unrest between England and Wales during the time of the Crusades.