General Lew Wallace’s accomplishments stretch much further than his 77 years. A Major General in the Union Army who led his troops in the decisive Civil War battles of Donelson, Shiloh, and Monocacy; a military judge in the trials of the Lincoln Conspirators and Commander Wirz of Andersonville Prison; ambassador to the Ottoman Empire; a brilliant author, orator, artist, inventor, and musician, General Wallace’s place is indelibly etched in the annals of American history.

But it was his masterwork, the epic religious novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), that gained General Wallace his highest accolades and cemented his reputation in literary history. Ben-Hur became the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. The novel the basis of several dramatizations, including the 1959 Academy Award®-winning motion picture starring Charlton Heston.


