Ben-Hur

Jon Solomon is Robert D. Novak Professor of Western Civilization and Culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Giovanni Boccaccio: The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods (Harvard University Press, 2011), The Ancient World in the Cinema: Revised and Expanded Edition (Yale University Press, 2001), Ptolemy’s Harmonics: Translation and Commentary (Brill, 1999), The Ancient World in the Cinema (A. S. Barnes & Co, 1978), Ancient Roman Feasts and Recipes (E. A. Seemann, 1977), The Complete Three Stooges (C3 Entertainment, 2001). He is editor of Accessing Antiquity: The Computerization of Classics Studies (University of Arizona Press, 1993), Apollo: Origins and Influences (University of Arizona Press, 1994) and Ancient Worlds in Film and Television: Gender and Politics (Brill, 2013).

• A Note About The Hyphen: Ben-Hur Vs Ben Hur; 1. The First Blockbuster; 2. Lew Wallace Before Ben-Hur; 3. “How I Came To Write Ben-Hur”; 4. Publication And Early Reception Of The Novel; 5. The Transformations Of The Novel; 6. Reasons For Success; 7. Early Staged Readings: Ben-Hur, In Tableaux And Pantomime; 8. Ben-Hur In Song And Instrumental Music; 9. My God! Did I Set All This Into Motion?”: The Klaw & Erlanger Ben-Hur; 10. “Ben-Hur Flour Has The Go To Make The Dough”: Early Ben-Hur Commerce; 11. Ben-Hur In Moving Pictures: Stereopticon Lectures And The 1907 Kalem Ben-Hur”; 12. “The Greatest Motion Picture Property In The History Of The Screen”: The 1925 Mgm Ben-Hur; 13. Between The Mgm Films; 14. The World’s Most Honored Motion Picture”: The 1959 Mgm Ben-Hur; 15. The Next Half-Century: New Formats And New Versions; 16. Bibliography.

He has collected an unimaginable amount of material and has thus created a Ben-Hur lexicon that, for a long time, will serve as a reference book for all future stories about the famous Roman and his later works.(translated from German)