 Kenilworth remained a ruin during the 18th and 19th centuries, still used as a farm but increasingly also popular as a tourist attraction. The first guidebook to the castle, A Concise history and description of Kenilworth Castle, was printed in 1777 with many later editions following in the coming decades. The castle's cultural prominence increased after Sir Walter Scott wrote Kenilworth in 1821 describing the royal visit of Queen Elizabeth. Very loosely based on the events of 1575, Scott's story reinvented aspects of the castle and its history to tell the story of "the pathetic, beautiful, undisciplined heroine Amy Robsart and the steely Elizabeth I". Although considered today as a less successful literary novel than some of his other historical works, it popularised Kenilworth Castle in the Victorian imagination as a romantic Elizabethan location. Kenilworth spawned "numerous stage adaptations and burlesques, at least eleven operas, popular redactions, and even a scene in a set of dioramas for home display", including Sir Arthur Sullivan's 1865 cantata The Masque at Kenilworth. J. M. W. Turner painted several watercolours of the castle.
