Ivanhoe

Crowded with incident and full of memorable characters, among them wicked Prince John, the outlaw Robin Hood and the beautiful Jewess Rebecca, Ivanhoe is Scott's most high-spirited novel. Ivanhoe, banished by his father, Cedric, for falling in love with Cedric's ward Rowena, wins the trust of Richard Coeur-de-Lion at the Crusades. Returning to England to claim his inheritance, Ivanhoe is drawn into the struggle between Richard and his brother John. In the three central scenes of the book – the great tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, the siege of Front de Boeuf's castle and Rebecca's trial for witchcraft – Scott draws together the apparently opposing themes of historical reality and chivalric romance, social realism and high adventure, past and present. This Penguin Classics edition with a special introduction is the first authoritative edition of Ivanhoe drawn from Scott's original texts. It is based on the acclaimed Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels.

About the Author

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771, educated there and called to the bar in 1792. Having developed an early interest in BOrder tales and ballads he spent much of his free time exploring the Border country, and in 1796 published his first work - a translation of Burger's 'Lenore' - anonymously. He began to publish wroks under his own name in 1802 while holiday well-respected offices such as Sheriff of Selkirkshire. Having refused the laureateship in 1813, and being eclipsed by Byron as a poet, Scott began to write novels - again anonymously to start with. He died in 1832.