“The Mexican War soon followed, however, and I took the manuscript with me when I enlisted. But before the close of my service it was lost, and my production, therefore, never reached the public eye.”
“But did not the approval which the book received from the few persons who read it encourage you to continue writing?”
“Fully fifty years have elapsed since then, and it is, therefore, rather difficult, at this late day, to recall just how such things affected me. I suppose I was encouraged thereby, for, in due course of time, another book which turned out to be
“THE FAIR GOD”
my first book to reach the public,—began to shape itself in my mind. The composition of this work was not, as the theatrical people would say, a continuous performance, for there were many and singular interruptions; and it would be safe to say that months, and, in one case, years, intervened between certain chapters. A few years after the war, I finished the composition, strung the chapters into a continuous narrative, leveled up the uneven places, and started East with the manuscript. A letter from Whitelaw Reid, then editor of the New York Tribune, introduced me to the head of one of the leading publishing houses in Boston. There I was kindly received, and delivered my manuscript, which was referred to a professional reader, to determine its literary, and also, I presume, its commercial value.
“It would be neither a new nor an interesting story to acquaint the public with the degree of anxious suspense that pervaded my mind when I withdrew to await the reader’s judgment. Every other writer has, I assume, at one time or another, undergone much the same experience. It was not long until I learned from the publisher that the reader reported in favor of my production. Publication soon followed, and for the first time, in a literary sense, I found myself before the public, and my book before the critics.”
THE ORIGIN OF “BEN-HUR”
“How long after this did ‘Ben-Hur’ appear, and what led you to write it?”
“I began ‘Ben-Hur’ about 1876, and it was published in 1880. The purpose, at first, was a short serial for one of the magazines, descriptive of the visit of the wise men to Jerusalem as mentioned in the first two verses of the second chapter of Matthew. It will be recognized in ‘Book First’ of the work as now published. For certain reasons, however, the serial idea was abandoned, and the narrative, instead of ending with the birth of the Saviour, expanded into a more pretentious novel and only ended with the death scene on Calvary. The last ten chapters were written in the old adobe palace at Santa Fé, New Mexico, where I was serving as governor.
“It is difficult to answer the question, ‘what led me to write the book;’ or why I chose a piece of fiction which used Christ as its leading character. In explanation, it is proper to state that I had reached an age in life when men usually begin to study themselves with reference to their fellowmen, and reflect on the good they may have done in the world. Up to that time, never having read the Bible, I knew nothing about sacred history; and, in matters of a religious nature, although I was not in every respect an infidel, I was persistently and notoriously indifferent. I did not know, and therefore, did not care. I resolved to begin the study of the good book in earnest.