Ivanhoe
by Sir Walter Scott · first published 1800
12mentions
4recommended by
10HN commenters
2011–2025first – last mentioned
40% recommend60% neutral
The father of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott invented a literary form that has remained popular for over one hundred and fifty years. Infusing his works with romance, action, and suspense, he brought long-gone eras back to life with splendor and spectacle.Set in England just after the Third Crusade, Ivanhoe is the tale of Wilfrid, a young Saxon knight, and his love for the royal princess Rowena. With his father against their union, Wilfrid embarks on a series of adventures to prove his worth, finding himself in conflict against the Normans and the Templars, and allied with such larger-
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Ivanhoe is a great read, Scott's pastiche of age-of-chivalry novels, but modern readers will probably find the treatment of the Jewish character Isaac to be glaringly bad antisemitism. (Oddly, his daughter Rebecca…
on “The Medieval Battle That Launched Modern English” ↗I think my dad did the same thing. The two books I remember him recommending were: Have Spacesuit Will Travel by Heinlein and Ivanhoe but Sir Walter Scott. If you don't mind sharing what books did your dad recommend?
on “The challenges, and hypocrisies, of raising kids in a gaming house” ↗I think the golden age of historical fiction is long past, of works like: -Walter Scott's Ivanhoe -George Eliot's Romola -Henryk Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis -Bulwer Lytton's Last days of Pompeii -Evelyn Waugh's Helena -Anatole France's God's are athirst. -Tolstoy's War and Peace -Gore Vidal's Burr…
on “Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction? (2019)” ↗…many US high-school English teachers don't actually read anything outside of their curriculum literature. The glory of English literature is that it varies widely. Want a swashbuckle? Got it--here's "Ivanhoe". Want a soap opera? "Tom Jones". All manner of surreal? Roald Dahl. Incredibly dark humor? Late Mark Twain. Even when someone says "I don't like author <X>.", if someone explains what they don't…
on “On pretending to have read books” ↗An illustrative quote from the first chapter of Sir Walter Scott's historical novel Ivanhoe (published 1820, available from Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/82): --- “Truly,” said Wamba, without stirring from the spot, “I have consulted my legs upon this matter, and they…
on “The Medieval Battle That Launched Modern English” ↗At least in the case of meat vs animal, this was pointed out in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, published 1819-1820.
on “The English language doesn't exist – it's just French that's badly pronounced” ↗I think you want pig-pork, not pig-ham. (Ham is an Anglo-Saxon term.) IIRC, this "theory" first appears in dialogue in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1820).
on “Anglo-Saxons did not use the four-letter profanities we credit them with” ↗I have always wondered at the popularity of the first name Cedric, because the name was newly coined(in the early 1800s) by Walter Scott in his novel Ivanhoe, for the character Cedric of Rotherwood, a Saxon chief, and is not a historically relevant name.
on “Cédric Villani: mathematician challenging to be Paris mayor” ↗Let's see here, it's been a while... Sir Walter Scott wrote more than Ivanhoe - his stuff is pretty flowery Lord Dunsany wrote early, early, early fantasy. His stuff is absurdly purple. Tolkein's writings are on the flowery side too. The (Anti-)?Federalist papers also have some…
on “Middle-earth according to Mordor - The Lord of the Rings retold” ↗Walter Scott's Ivanhoe is mostly great, and has Rebecca as a normal fully realized character who is Jewish .. and her father Isaac as the most ludicrously horrible collection of moneylender stereotypes. Very odd and easily…
on “A Convivial Chap Led Easily Astray: On G. K. Chesterton” ↗It seems rather difficult to believe Scott took up that much shelf space unless there were multiple copies of Ivanhoe, as there would tend to be. Also the article isn't really about Scott, in fact he's hardly even mentioned.
on “Killing Sir Walter Scott: A philosophical exploration of weeding (2013)” ↗…books at its peak. If you don't already have them on your list, historians have mentioned several books that were known to have strongly influenced him: Walter Scott's historical novels, particularly "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley," which inspired Dumas' approach to historical fiction James Fenimore Cooper's frontier adventures, which influenced his action narratives Lord Byron's romantic poetry and persona, which…
on “How to live an intellectually rich life” ↗