Inspired by Sir Walter Scott and Ivanhoe

Sir Walter Scott is the father of historical fiction. His work directly inspired writers who followed him, providing a virtual template for the setting of personal dramas against a well-researched background of historical detail. Because of the staggering success of his Waverley stories (named for the first book, Waverley, published in 1814), the historical novel became the most popular literary mode of the early nineteenth century, and Scott himself became an icon. The Waverley novels and tales—almost thirty in number, published between 1814 and 1832—portray various episodes in the history of Scotland, with settings in the English Middle Ages, Jacobean England, medieval France, the Middle East during the Crusades, and even the Roman Empire.

Because of Scott’s example and his enormous success, an attempt at historical fiction became routine for serious novelists in the nineteenth century. In his immediate wake, most of the nineteenth-century English heavyweights, including William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Thomas Hardy, wrote at least one novel in the genre. (Jane Austen did not and was criticized for it.) Charles Dickens set A Tale of Two Cities (1859) in London and Paris during the French Revolution. George Eliot’s only historical novel, Romola (1863), takes place in the fifteenth-century Florence of the Medicis. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1863-1869), composed in Russian and set during that country’s 1805-1814 war with Napoleon, is probably the greatest historical novel in any language. In America, Mark Twain lampooned historical fiction in his intentionally anachronistic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court ( 1889 ) .

James Fenimore Cooper and Alexandre Dumas centered their careers on the historical novel. Cooper, sometimes called the “American Scott,” consciously patterned himself after the creator of Ivanhoe. He is best known for his Leatherstocking Tales, most memorably The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Deerslayer (1841), which recount the adventures of wilderness scout Natty Bumppo during the French and Indian Wars. Cooper first became famous with his second novel, The Spy (1821), and also wrote a series of nautical tales; the opening installment, The Pilot (1823), was the first American novel about the sea. Dumas, a Frenchman, began his career as a celebrated historical playwright before turning his attention to fiction. The Three Musketeers (1844), the story of four sword-wielding heroes and their marvelous friendship, was set in the seventeenth century and spawned multiple sequels, notably the novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, better known today as The Man in the Iron Mask (1848). Dumas and Cooper, like their predecessor, captured large audiences with their lively stories, which provide a satisfying blend of humor, adventure, and melodrama.

Ivanhoe (1819), the first of Scott’s novels set in England, had a tremendous impact on the revival of Victorian interest in the Middle Ages, and this fascination with the age of knights and chivalry has lasted into the third millennium. With Ivanhoe, Scott also cemented the Robin Hood myth. The legend of Robin Hood had appeared in various forms as early as the fourteenth century, but the version detailed in Ivanhoe, which depicts Robin Hood as a high-minded Saxon fighting oppressive Norman lords, is the most universally known. Robin Hood movies—the most notable is The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), featuring Errol Flynn as the hooded hero—have proven to be an evergreen commodity for the film industry.

William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair (1848), wrote a satirical sequel to Ivanhoe. Mocking the nineteenth-century fascination with the Middle Ages, Rebecca and Rowena (1850) takes issue with Ivanhoe’s “icy, faultless, prim” wife, a complaint about Rowena that was by no means uniquely his. Thackeray’s short novel reveals the faults of Ivanhoe’s bride and remarries him to Rebecca, the character most critics call the more interesting figure.

Ivanhoe was dramatized as early as 1819, when stage productions went up in both London and New York. Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini composed his opera Ivanhoe, never widely performed, during the following decade. Sir Arthur Sullivan, best known for his comic operetta collaborations with W. S. Gilbert, chose Ivanhoe as the subject of his one serious opera in 1891. Silent movie versions of Ivanhoe appeared by two different film companies in 1913.

Richard Thorpe’s classic MGM film Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1952) stars the amazingly photogenic Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Fontaine as Rebecca and Rowena, respectively, with a suitably chivalrous Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe. George Sanders gives a convincing portrayal of the tormented Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and Guy Rolfe mesmerizes as the slimy Prince John. Attractive cinematography on location in England and high production values make the film an enjoyable adventure. Miklos Rozsa’s marvelous score lends excitement to the well-staged action scenes. A television series starring James Bond actor Roger Moore appeared in 1958, with numerous other versions emerging in its wake.