ABSTRACT
The problem of authenticity arises from the nature of the historical novel itself, and as the founder of the genre Scott naturally wrestled with its problems. Scott opens with two possible criticisms of Ivanhoe arising from the novel's setting in twelfth-century England. As Scott himself had probably realised as early as 1816, with his apology for the weak plot of The Antiquary, his gifts were often best exercised in spite of his audience's expectations. Scott continues the Epistle by advancing some theoretical canons for the historical novelist. Now rejecting the argument that the author must have direct experience of his subject, Scott asserts instead that: to those deeply read in antiquity, hints concerning the private life of our ancestors lie scattered through the pages of our various historians. In fact, Scott partly retracts this implication in the next paragraph of the Epistle, and admits that complete, naturalistic reproduction of the past is impossible.
