Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe
Title page of 1st edition (1820, but released in December 1819)
AuthorWalter Scott
LanguageEnglish
SeriesWaverley Novels
GenreHistorical novel, chivalric romance
PublisherArchibald Constable (Edinburgh); Hurst, Robinson, and Co. (London)
Publication date
20 December 1819[1]
Publication placeGreat Britain
Media typePrint
Pages401 (Edinburgh Edition, 1998)
Preceded byA Legend of Montrose 
Followed byThe Monastery 
TextIvanhoe at Wikisource
Ivanhoe on the Scott Monument, Edinburgh (sculpted by John Rhind)

Ivanhoe: A Romance (/ˈvənˌh/) by Walter Scott is a historical novel published in three volumes, in December 1819, as one of the Waverley novels. It marked a shift away from Scott's prior practice of setting stories in Scotland and in the more recent past. It became one of Scott's best-known and most influential novels.

Set in England in the Middle Ages, with colourful descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial, and divisions between Jews and Christians, Normans and Saxons, the novel was credited by many, including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, with inspiring increased interest in chivalric romance and medievalism. As John Henry Newman put it, Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the Middle Ages".[2] It was also credited with influencing contemporary popular perceptions of historical figures such as King Richard the Lionheart, Prince John, and Robin Hood.

  1. ^ William B. Todd and Ann Bowden, Sir Walter Scott: A Bibliographical History 1796–1832 (New Castle, Delaware, 1998), 502.
  2. ^ Chandler, Alice (March 1965). "Sir Walter Scott and the Medieval Revival". Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 19 (4): 315–332. doi:10.2307/2932872. JSTOR 2932872.