Novel
Ivanhoe
Walter Scott · 1819
Opening lines
In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
England, 1194: four generations after the conquest, Saxons and Normans remain hostile; King Richard is held prisoner, no one knows where, by the Duke of Austria, and his brother John governs. The Saxon Cedric has banished his son Wilfred, who is in love with his ward Rowena, whom he intends for another man. Wilfred returns disguised as a pilgrim and helps a Jewish moneylender, Isaac of York, to flee the threats of a Templar he has already defeated in Palestine. At the Ashby tournament, he fights under the name of the Disinherited Knight, while Isaac and his daughter Rebecca are among the spectators.
Context
The first half of the book was dictated: its author suffered from violent stomach pains and gave it aloud to a secretary, then took up the pen again. It appeared in Edinburgh on 18 December 1819 and in London on the 31st, in three volumes, without the author's name like all those in the series until 1827; the first editions bear the date 1820. It is the first of these books whose subject is entirely English. The conflict between the two peoples is presented there as still lively more than a hundred and twenty years after the conquest, which history does not support, and the outlaw of the forest comes from a collection of ballads published in 1795.
Who it is for
Originally a novel in three volumes, translated into French as early as 1820; paperback editions run from seven hundred to nine hundred pages.
Prizes and reception
The first print run, ten thousand copies, sold out in under two weeks, and a French version appeared the following year.
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