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Lew Wallace (credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born April 10, 1827, Brookville, Ind., U.S. — died Feb. 15, 1905, Crawfordsville, Ind.) U.S. writer. The son of Indiana's governor, he served in the Mexican War and in the American Civil War, in which he rose to the rank of major general. Later he returned to law practice, interrupted by two diplomatic postings. His literary reputation rests on three historical novels: The Fair God (1873), on the Spanish conquest of Mexico; The Prince of India (1893), on the Byzantine Empire; and, above all, the enormously popular Ben-Hur (1880; films, 1925, 1959), a romantic tale set in the Roman Empire during the time of Christ.

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