Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Fair God; or, The Last of the ’Tzins | 1873 |
| Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ | 1880 |
| The Boyhood of Christ | 1888 |
| The Prince of India; or, Why Constantinople Fell | 1893 |
Publication Order of Poetry and Plays
| Commodus: An Historical Play | 1876 |
| The Wooing of Malkatoon | 1898 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Life of Gen. Ben Harrison | 1888 |
| Lew Wallace: An Autobiography | 1906 |
About Lew Wallace
Lew Wallace (1827 to 1905) was an American soldier, lawyer, territorial governor and diplomat who is remembered as the author of “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” (1880). By 1900 it had overtaken “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as the best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century, and it has never been out of print.
Lewis Wallace was born in Brookville, Indiana, on 10 April 1827, the son of David Wallace, a lawyer who became governor of Indiana. He served in the Mexican-American War and practised law, and in the Civil War rose to major general in the Union army, fighting at Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Monocacy. Criticism of his conduct at Shiloh troubled him for the rest of his life. In 1865 he sat on the military commission that tried the Lincoln assassination conspirators and presided over the trial of Henry Wirz, commandant of the Andersonville prison camp.
Wallace said he took up writing as a diversion from studying law. He began his first novel, “The Fair God”, in the 1840s, but it was not published until 1873. Based on William H. Prescott’s history of the conquest of Mexico, it tells of the fall of the Aztec empire to Cortez and sold seven thousand copies in its first year.
He wrote “Ben-Hur” in his spare time at Crawfordsville, Indiana, and finished it in Santa Fe while governor of New Mexico Territory, a post he held from 1878 to 1881. The story of revenge and redemption follows Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman. Harper and Brothers published it on 12 November 1880. Only 2,800 copies sold in the first seven months, but by 1889 sales had reached 400,000, and the book was later adapted for the stage and for several films.
From 1881 to 1885 Wallace was United States minister to the Ottoman Empire, and during that posting he wrote “The Prince of India; or, Why Constantinople Fell” (1893), which he considered his best novel. He also wrote a campaign biography of Benjamin Harrison and the narrative poem “The Wooing of Malkatoon”. He died at Crawfordsville on 15 February 1905 while writing his autobiography, which his wife Susan completed with Mary Hannah Krout for publication in 1906.
Photo: Mathew Brady (Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).