Attracting a diverse readership, the novel offered them such action sequences as the chariot race and a naval battle between Romans and Aegean pirates. The novel did not become a bestseller until 1885, when Wallace, a retired Civil War major-general turned Indiana attorney and literary businessman, wrote a prequel for one of Harper’s magazines and then embarked on lecture tours, most notably reading aloud the chariot race passage to several thousand enthusiasts at Chautauqua in 1886. Judah returns to Judea, defeats Messala in a chariot race in Antioch, and then raises three legions to support the new “King of the Jews,” whose message of peace he ultimately realizes. The novel’s protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur, is a wealthy Jewish teenager betrayed by his Roman friend Messala and enslaved in a naval galley, where he rescues the tribune Quintus Arrius, who in turn adopts him. It has generated more successful popular artistic by-products and had a larger commercial impact than any other modern literary property within the Greco-Roman tradition. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, a historical romance novel set in 1st-century Judea and Antioch, was written by Lew Wallace ( 1827–1905) and published by Harper & Brothers in 1880.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |