This is a mid-19th-century A. & C. Black (Edinburgh) multi-volume edition of The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., illustrated with steel engravings after watercolours by J. M. W. Turner. The series reflects the long posthumous publishing tradition surrounding Scott’s work, linked in spirit to the Abbotsford Club—founded in the 1830s to honour Scott’s literary legacy and the historical associations of his Abbotsford estate. Each volume contains a full-page steel-engraved frontispiece and a title-page vignette. In Rokeby (Volume IV), the frontispiece presents Dryburgh Abbey—Scott’s burial place—while the title vignette depicts Bowes Towers, both engraved by William Miller after Turner’s atmospheric landscapes. Turner’s original series of Scottish and northern English views, commissioned in the 1830s for earlier Cadell editions, became enduring visual companions to Scott’s verse and were faithfully reused in later A. & C. Black printings such as this.

Sir Walter Scott, J.M.W. Turner (illustrator), William Miller (illustrator)

Rokeby and Harold the dauntless