Which Romantic novelist wrote 'Ivanhoe'?

Sir Walter Scott wrote “Ivanhoe,” a historical novel first released in December 1819, although its first-edition title page was dated 1820. It was published anonymously as one of Scott’s Waverley Novels and became one of his most influential works.

Set in medieval England, the novel follows the knight Wilfred of Ivanhoe after his return from the Crusades. Its plot brings together Saxon–Norman tensions, a tournament, King Richard the Lionheart, Prince John, Robin Hood, the Jewish heroine Rebecca, and the Norman knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert. Scott blended invented characters with historical settings and figures, helping popularise medieval chivalry for nineteenth-century readers.

The book is sometimes treated as straightforward history, but Scott deliberately fictionalised the period. Modern historians have especially questioned the novel’s portrayal of a continuing, sharply divided Saxon and Norman society. “Ivanhoe” is also the name of the hero and was reportedly inspired by Ivinghoe, a village in Buckinghamshire.