Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ - Novel's Background

Novel's Background

By this time, Wallace had published another novel and a play. He went on to publish several more novels and biographies, but Ben-Hur was most important. As influence for its writing, he recounted his life-changing journey and talk in 1875 with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. Meeting on a train, during the journey the known agnostic Ingersoll quizzed Wallace about the history of Christ and the ideas of the religion. Wallace realized during the conversation how little he knew about Christianity. He wrote, “I was ashamed of myself, and make haste now to declare that the mortification of pride I then endured...ended in a resolution to study the whole matter.” Writing about Christianity helped him become clear about his own ideas and beliefs. Wallace developed the novel Ben Hur from his exploration.

Determined to have the novel be historically accurate, Wallace gathered references concerning the Middle East during the time period of his novel, visiting libraries all over America and studying the Bible closely, to give his story authenticity. He intended to identify the plants, birds, names, architectural practices and so on. He wrote, “I examined catalogues of books and maps, and sent for everything likely to be useful. I wrote with a chart always before my eyes—a German publication showing the towns and villages, all sacred places, the heights, the depressions, the passes, trails, and distances.” He recounts traveling to research the exact proportions for the Roman triremes. On visiting the Holy Land many years later, he found that his estimations in the story were proved accurate and that he could "find no reason for making a single change in the text of the book." He gives four pages to describing the chariot race and the stadium where it is held:

“Let the reader try to fancy it; let him first look down on the arena, and see it glistening in its frame of dull-gray granite walls; let him then, in this perfect field, see the chariots, light of wheel, very graceful, and ornate ... let the reader see the accompanying shadows fly; and, with such distinctness as the picture comes, he may share the satisfaction and deeper pleasure of those to whom it was a thrilling fact, not a feeble fancy.”

Ben-Hur was inspired in part by Wallace's love of the novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1846) by Alexandre Dumas, père. Dumas's novel was based on the memoirs of a French shoemaker in the early 19th century, who was unjustly imprisoned and spent the rest of his life seeking revenge. In his autobiography, Wallace said that while he was writing Ben-Hur "at my rough pine-table, the Count of Monte Cristo in his dungeon of stone was not more lost to the world." The historian Victor Davis Hanson argues that the novel is based on Wallace's own life, particularly his experiences as a division commander during the American Civil War under General Grant. At the Battle of Shiloh, Grant's army sustained heavy casualties, which caused a furor in the North. Wallace's controversial command decisions during the battle drew accusations of incompetence, doing permanent damage to his military reputation.

Wallace wrote most of the book in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where his favorite place was underneath a beech tree (since called the Ben-Hur Beech) near his house. He completed the novel in the New Mexico Territory while he was serving as territorial governor. His room in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe was once described in tours as the birthplace of Ben-Hur. In his memoir, Wallace wrote that he composed the climactic scenes of the crucifixion in his room by lantern light, after returning from a dramatic encounter with Henry McCarty, better known as Billy the Kid. With the work finished, Wallace visited Harper and Brothers in New York to present the manuscript, which he had written in purple ink. Joseph Harper praised it as “the most beautiful manuscript that has ever come into this house. A bold experiment to make Christ a hero that has been often tried and always failed.” The manuscript has survived and is held by the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.