Ivanhoe

A Romance

Reading time: about 14 h
Length: 193,152 words · 360 pages
Structure: 45 chapters · 12 front-matter sections
Language: English
Era: Romantic

England in 1194: Richard I is missing on his way back from crusade, Prince John holds the kingdom, and Saxon and Norman are not yet one people. Into this Walter Scott sends the disinherited knight Wilfred of Ivanhoe, his father Cedric the Saxon, the Templar Bois-Guilbert, Rebecca and her father Isaac of York, and a yeoman archer out of Sherwood who wins the prize at the Ashby tournament.

Published at the end of 1819, Ivanhoe was the first of Scott’s novels set outside Scotland, and it fixed the shape of the historical romance for a century: the tournament, the siege, the trial by combat, the outlaws in the greenwood — and Robin Hood very much as we still picture him.

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About the author

Walter Scott

1771–1832 · Romantic

Walter Scott (1771–1832) was born in Edinburgh, practised as an advocate, and held the offices of Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire and Clerk of Session for most of his life. He was the most popular poet in Britain — The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion, The Lady of the Lake — before turning, anonymously, to the Waverley novels in 1814. Ivanhoe (1819) was the first he set outside Scotland. Made a baronet in 1820, he was ruined by his publishers’ failure in 1826 and wrote on to pay the debts.

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