Ben Hur

Before writing Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace was best known for being a Major General in the American Civil War. After the war, a conversation with an atheist caused Wallace to take stock of how little he knew about his own religion. He launched into what would be years of research so that he could write with accuracy about first-century Israel. Although Judah Ben-Hur is the novel’s main character, the book’s subtitle, “A Tale of the Christ,” reveals Wallace’s real focus. Sales were only a trickle at the beginning, but it soon became a bestseller, and went on to become the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. It has never been out of print, and to date has inspired two plays, a TV series, and five films—one of which, the 1959 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer epic, is considered to be one of the best films yet made.

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