Through the memoirs of Frank Osbaldistone, recalling in old age his encounters with the outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor, Scott dramatizes religious and political conflicts in eighteenth-century Scotland. Setting the wild, feudal world of the Highlands against the new financial realities of the great commercial cities, he delights in the romance of both while recognizing that the first is passing inexorably away.
This is one of the finest stories by the man who invented the historical novel and remains its greatest exponent.