Set in England in the Middle Ages, with colourful descriptions of a tournament, outlaws, a witch trial, and divisions between Jews and Christians, Normans and Saxons, the novel was credited by many, including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, with inspiring increased interest in chivalric romance and medievalism.

In June 1819, Walter Scott still suffered from the severe stomach pains that had forced him to dictate the last part of The Bride of Lammermoor, and also most of A Legend of the Wars of Montrose, which he finished at the end of May.

[3] For detailed information about the Middle Ages Scott drew on three works by the antiquarian Joseph Strutt: Horda Angel-cynnan or a Compleat View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits etc.

His clearest debt to an original medieval source involved the Templar Rule, reproduced in The Theatre of Honour and Knight-Hood (1623) translated from the French of André Favine.

Scott was happy to introduce details from the later Middle Ages, and Chaucer was particularly helpful, as (in a different way) was the fourteenth-century romance Richard Coeur de Lion.

[4] The figure of Locksley in the story and many elements of the tale are undoubtedly influenced by Scott's association with Joseph Ritson, who had earlier compiled Robin Hood: a collection of all the ancient poems, songs and ballads now extant relative to that celebrated English outlaw (1795).

[5] It is possible that Scott was involved in minor changes to the text during the early 1820s but his main revision was carried out in 1829 for the 'Magnum' edition where the novel appeared in Volumes 16 and 17 in September and October 1830.

Cedric planned to have Rowena marry the powerful Lord Athelstane, a pretender to the Crown of England by his descent from the last Saxon King, Harold Godwinson.

Following the night's meal, the palmer observes one of the Normans, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, issue orders to his Saracen soldiers to capture Isaac.

Also in attendance are Cedric, Athelstane, Lady Rowena, Isaac of York, his daughter Rebecca, Robin of Locksley and his men, Prince John's advisor Waldemar Fitzurse, and numerous Norman knights.

On the first day of the tournament, in a bout of individual jousting, a mysterious knight, identifying himself only as "Desdichado" (described in the book as Spanish, taken by the Saxons to mean "Disinherited"), defeats Bois-Guilbert.

The masked knight declines to reveal himself despite Prince John's request, but is nevertheless declared the champion of the day and is permitted to choose the Queen of the Tournament.

Desdichado's side is soon hard-pressed and he himself beset by multiple foes until rescued by a knight nicknamed Le Noir Faineant ('the Black Sluggard'), who thereafter departs in secret.

Instead, Rebecca, a skilled physician, tends to him while they are lodged near the tournament and then convinces her father to take Ivanhoe with them to their home in York when he is fit for that trip.

The Black Knight, having taken refuge for the night in the hut of local friar, the Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, volunteers his assistance on learning about the captives from Robin of Locksley.

Ivanhoe rises quickly to finish the fight by sword; however, Bois-Guilbert, suffering from the severe inner conflict of his love for Rebecca and his honor as a knight, dies from emotional turmoil.

He wishes to provide an English counterpart to the preceding Waverley novels, in spite of various difficulties arising from the chronologically remote setting made necessary by the earlier progress of civilisation south of the Border.

2: Wamba and Gurth wilfully misdirect a group of horsemen headed by Prior Aymer and Brian de Bois-Guilbert seeking shelter at Cedric's Rotherwood.

7: As the audience for a tournament at Ashby de la Zouch assembles, Prince John amuses himself by making fun of Athelstane and Isaac.

14: At the tournament banquet Cedric continues to disown his son (who has been associating with the Normans) but drinks to the health of Richard, rather than John, as the noblest of that race.

Ivanhoe, exhausted from his ride and not fully recovered from his injury, appears as Rebecca's champion, and as they charge Bois-Guilbert dies the victim of his contending passions.

[7] Ivanhoe maintains many of the elements of the Romance genre, including the quest, a chivalric setting, and the overthrowing of a corrupt social order to bring on a time of happiness.

[7][8] Scott treats themes similar to those of some of his earlier novels, like Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian, examining the conflict between heroic ideals and modern society.

[10] Older rural people in the Ivinghoe area most probably pronounced the name the same as Ivanhoe, according to Prof. Paul Kerswill of the University of York, a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).

Modern readers are cautioned to understand that Scott's aim was to create a compelling novel set in a historical period, not to provide a book of history.

[16] There has been criticism of Scott's portrayal of the bitter extent of the "enmity of Saxon and Norman, represented as persisting in the days of Richard" as "unsupported by the evidence of contemporary records that forms the basis of the story.

[18][19][20] However, Scott may have intended to suggest parallels between the Norman Conquest, which takes place roughly 130 years before the setting of Ivanhoe, and Scott's native Scotland, which had united with England in 1707 roughly the same length of time ago, and witnessed a resurgence in Scottish nationalism evidenced by the emergence of Robert Burns, the famous poet who deliberately chose to work in Scots vernacular though he was an educated man and spoke modern English eloquently.

Several of them found themselves transported imaginatively to the remote period of the novel, although some problems were recognised: the combining of features from the high and late Middle Ages; an awkwardly created language for the dialogue; and antiquarian overload.

A portion of the Silver Lake neighborhood in Los Angeles was originally known as Ivanhoe, named by Hugo Reid, a Scottish immigrant for whom the rolling hills of the area reminded him of his home in Scotland.

The upper reservoir and an elementary school are still named Ivanhoe while many of the streets in the area reference Scott's other works and characters such as Herkimer, Rowena, Kenilworth, Ben Lomond, Hawick, and St.