Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott - G. H. Maynadier (essay date 1926)

G. H. Maynadier (essay date 1926)

SOURCE: "Ivanhoe and Its Literary Consequences," in Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell, by His Assistants, Harvard University Press, 1926, pp. 221-33.

[ In the essay that follows, Maynadier contends that the strength of the dramatic moments in Ivanhoe makes it more a work of romantic fiction than of historical narrative, although Ivanhoe deeply influenced the historical novel and the nineteenth-century attempt to popularize history.]

A little more than six years ago there was a literary anniversary which, it has seemed to me, passed without due notice—the centennial of Ivanhoe. Despite the date of 1820 on the title-page, it was in the year 1819, on the eighteenth of December, that this famous romance was put on sale, and in all Scott's literary career, no event had more significance. It not only brought Scott to the climax of his popularity, which had been growing...

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