Historical novel

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is

a novel that has as its setting a period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic detail and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to historical fact. The work may deal with actual historical personages...or it may contain a mixture of fictional and historical characters.

Overview

An early example of historical fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history. In England, Daniel Defoe (ca. 1659–1731) was one of the first successful writers in this genre. Defoe works such as Robinson Crusoe (1719) used historical settings.

A pioneer of the genre in Western Europe was the German author Benedikte Naubert (1756–1819), who wrote 50 historical novels. Her technique of focusing attention on a person of minor historical significance and witnessing events through his eyes was borrowed by Sir Walter Scott, who had read her works.

The historical novel was further popularized in the 19th century by writers classified as Romantics. Many regard Sir Walter Scott as the first to have used this technique, in his novels of Scottish history such as Waverley (1814) and Rob Roy (1818). His Ivanhoe (1820) gains credit for renewing interest in the Middle Ages. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) furnishes another 19th century example of the romantic-historical novel as does Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. In the United States, Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Fenimore Cooper were prominent.

Many early historical novels played an important role in the rise of European popular interest in the history of the Middle Ages. Hugo's Hunchback often receives credit for fueling the movement to save Gothic architecture in France, leading to the establishment of the Monuments historiques, the French governmental authority for historic preservation.

Historical fiction has also served to encourage movements of romantic nationalism. A series of novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski on the history of Poland popularized the country's history after it had lost its independence in the Partitions of Poland. Subsequently the Polish winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in literature, Henryk Sienkiewicz, wrote several immensely popular novels set in conflicts between the Poles and predatory Teutonic Knights, rebelling Cossacks and invading Swedes. (He also penned a once popular novel about Nero's Rome and the early Christians, Quo Vadis, which has been filmed several times.)

Scott's Waverley novels ignited interest in Scottish history and still illuminate it. Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter fulfilled a similar function for Norwegian history; Undset later won a Nobel Prize for Literature (1928).

The genre of the historical novel has also permitted some authors, such as the Polish novelist Bolesław Prus in his sole historical novel, Pharaoh, to distance themselves from their own time and place to gain perspective on society and on the human condition, or to escape the depredations of the censor.

In some historical novels, major historic events take place mostly off-stage, while the fictional characters inhabit the world where those events occur. Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped recounts mostly private adventures set against the backdrop of the Jacobite troubles in Scotland. Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge is set amid the Gordon Riots, and A Tale of Two Cities in the French Revolution.

In some works, the accuracy of the historical elements has been questioned, as in Alexandre Dumas' Queen Margot. Postmodern novelists such as John Barth and Thomas Pynchon operate with even more freedom, mixing historical characters and settings with invented history and fantasy, as in the novels The Sot-Weed Factor and Mason & Dixon respectively. A few writers create historical fiction without fictional characters. One example is I, Claudius, by 20th Century writer Robert Graves; another is the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough.

Time scales in historical novels vary widely. While many focus on a particular event or series of events, writers like James A. Michener and Edward Rutherfurd employ generations of fictional characters to tell tales that stretch for hundreds or thousands of years. Others, like McCullough and Gore Vidal, compose a chronological series of linked novels.

Some writers postulate an alternative to accepted historical presumptions. In I, Claudius, by 20th century writer Robert Graves, the Roman Emperor Claudius, until then commonly regarded as inept by historians, is presented in a more sympathetic light. Mary Renault's novels of ancient Greece, such as The Last of the Wine, implied suggestions of tolerance for homosexuality. Gore Vidal's novels about American history, including Burr and 1876, included iconoclastic and cynical insights about the nature of political processes and American history. Historical fiction can also serve satirical purposes. An example is George MacDonald Fraser's tales of the dashing cad, poltroon, and bounder Sir Harry Paget Flashman.

The historical novel remains popular with authors and readers to this day; bestsellers include Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, and Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. A striking development in British/Irish writing in the past 25 years has been the renewed interest in the First World War. Works include William Boyd's An Ice-Cream War; Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and The Girl at the Lion d'Or (concerned with the War's consequences); Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way.

Another relatively recent trend is genre mixing; creating hyphenated sub-categories like the historical-mystery novels of Iain Pears and David Liss (some might argue that the venerable Sherlock Holmes stories created this mix), and the historical-thrillers of Dan Brown. The science fiction genre also contains a couple of historical sub-genres; alternate history such as Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna, and time travel with historical settings, such as the "Company" stories of Kage Baker.

Authors of the past

• Stephen Crane
• G. A. Henty
• Rosemary Sutcliff
• Mika Waltari
• General Lew Wallace

Living authors

• Ann Rinaldi, writing YA historical fiction (Time Enough For Drums, A Break with Charity). She writes usually with female protagonists in the first person, set in Colonial - Civil War era America or World War I era. Critically acclaimed and admired.
• Mark Turnbull, author of Decision Most Deadly, a novel set in London during 1641, as England plunged into civil war.
• Writing as "William Irish", Cornell Woolrich published Waltz into Darkness (1947), set in 1880 New Orleans. Interestingly, both film versions — François Truffaut's La sirène du Mississipi (Mississippi Mermaid, 1969) and Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) — place the action at a later time (and elsewhere).
• George Leonardos Author of historical Novels, such the trilogy for the Byzantine The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, "Mara, The Christian Sultana", the stepmother of Mehmed II the Conqueror, "Barbarossa the Pirate", "The Sleeping Beauty of Mystras etc.
• Linda Proud has been acclaimed for the depth of her research in recreating Renaissance Florence, particularly the philosophical currents that informed the work of Botticelli, in A Tabernacle for the Sun, Pallas and the Centaur and The Rebirth of Venus. http://www.lindaproud.com/
• Albert A. Bell, Jr. writes mysteries set in the Roman Empire with Pliny the younger as sleuth and Tacitus as sidekick. See All Roads Lead to Murder. http://www.albertbell.com/
• T.C. Boyle's The Road to Wellville (1993), set in 1907, tells the story of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of cornflakes, and his Battle Creek Sanitarium.
• Colleen McCullough has written the famous Masters of Rome series, which deals with the end of the great Roman Republic and great personalities like Caesar, Gaius Marius and Sulla.
• John Jakes has written the best-selling North and South Trilogy on the life and times of members of two families during the American Civil war and also The Kent Family Chronicles.
• Gillian Bradshaw, a classical scholar, writes historical fiction set in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Duchy of Brittany, the Byzantine Empire, Saka and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Imperial Rome, Sub-Roman Britain and Roman Britain.
• Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day (1989), set in 1956, explains in flashbacks the dubious history of (fictitious) 1930s Darlington Hall and its association with Nazi Germany.
• Patrick Redmond's The Wishing Game (1999) provides a thrilling depiction of life in a strict and uncanny boarding school in 1950s rural Norfolk, England.
• Julie Myerson's novel Laura Blundy (2000) is set in Victorian London.
• Bernard Cornwell is one of today's best-known historical novelists, with his Sharpe and The Warlord Chronicles.
• Conn Iggulden is also a well known historical-fiction author of the widely acclaimed Emperor series, The Conqueror series and the Dangerous Book for Boys, although it should be noted that the Emperor series is best known for its gross historical inaccuracies.
• Jonathan Coe's novel The Rotters' Club (2001) evokes 1970s Britain.
• Cecelia Holland has written over twenty novels set in various parts of Europe, Asia and the United States in many periods.
• The bulk of Gore Vidal's novels have historical settings, including Burr, which has gained a wider readership than any biography of Aaron Burr.
• Neal Stephenson's series The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), published in 2003 and 2004, deals with the rise of the scientific worldview and the beginnings of modern capitalism in late 17th and early 18th century Europe. Cryptonomicron is set in World War II.
• Iain Pears is the author of several historical novels, including An Instance of the Fingerpost and Stone's Fall.
• The James Reasoner Civil War Series is a 10-volume set of historical novels set in Culpeper, Virginia.
• Amita Kanekar's A Spoke in the Wheel is a novel about the Buddha and his disciples, that alternates between the time of the Buddha, i.e. about 566 BCE, and the time of Ashoka the Great, i.e. about 250 BCE.
• Marianne Curley. Her books Old Magic and the Guardians of Time Trilogy all take place partially in the past.
• Umberto Eco's novels, most notably his most famous, The Name of the Rose, are historical novels, taking place in Medieval or Early Modern Europe.
• Marie-Elena John is a Caribbean writer whose debut novel Unburnable gives a slice of social history of the Caribbean, focusing on the African origins of Caribbean culture.
• Arturo Pérez-Reverte is the Spanish author of the Captain Alatriste novels and other historical novels.
• Robert Harris has written four historical novels so far: Enigma, which is set during World War II As well as Pompeii, Imperium and Lustrum, which are set in Ancient Rome.
• Courtney Thomas's Walls of Phantoms accurately documents the daily news events of 1989 - including providing the historical framework of what lead to these events - in this meticulously wrought epic.
• Anurag Kumar's Recalcitrance, set in the Great Uprising or Indian Mutiny of 1857
• Michael Goodspeed's Three to a Loaf, a carefully researched and highly readable Canadian spy novel illustrates the societies as well as the lives and attitudes of Allied and German soldiers locked in the cauldron of the Western Front.
• Thomas Pynchon's three novels Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon and Against the Day are historical, and they variously contrast outrageous personal, subjective, hallucinogenic or even supernatural events with very real, well-researched accuracies from the past.
• Tim Powers's novels, or many of them, for example Declare, are meticulously researched historical novels that slip supernatural elements into aspects of the history.
• S.J.A.Turney's 2009 debut, Marius' Mules, based on Julius Caesar's invasion of Gaul, viewed from the perspective of a Legionary commander, along with the 2010 sequel following the campaign against the Belgae.
• Rimi B. Chatterjee, set her second novel The City of Love in 16th century Malaysia, Burma and Bengal and dealt with spice traders, pirates, tantrics and sufis. Parts of her third novel Black Light are set in the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE and the 7th century and the early 20th century CE.
• Nerea Riesco set her second novel Ars Magica in Spain's early 17th century.
• Richard Zimler has an award-winning series of novels about different generations of a Portuguese-Jewish family of manuscript illuminators and kabbalists. The books are entitled The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (16th-century Lisbon), Hunting Midnight (19th century Porto and Charleston, South Carolina), Guardian of the Dawn (17th-century Goa) and The Seventh Gate (Berlin in the 1930s). He also wrote a historical mystery set in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940-41 entitled The Warsaw Anagrams.
• Julian Stockwin has an internationally-acclaimed series tracing one man's journey from pressed man to Admiral in the Age of Fighting Sail.
• Michael Cawood Green's historical fiction about the Trappist mission at Mariannhill, "For the Sake of Silence" has been awarded the 2009 Olive Schreiner prize by the English Academy of South Africa. His academic monograph "Novel Histories" is an exploration of the uses of history in fiction.
• Bevis Longstreth wrote two novels set in the Ancient Middle East, Spindle and Bow (2005), and Return of the Shade (2009), which tells the story of Queen Parysatis (444BC to 384BC) who ruled Ancient Persia.
• Jack Whyte wrote A Dream of Eagles during the 1990s and 2000s. Dream of Eagles is a set of novels about the rise of Camelot after the Roman departure from Britain in the late 4th/early 5th century. Whyte also wrote The Templar Trilogy, a set of novels that discusses the foundation, rise, and fall of the Knights Templar

Theory and criticism

The Marxist literary critic, essayist, and social theorist György Lukács wrote extensively on the aesthetic and political significance of the historical novel. In 1937's der historische Roman, published originally in Russian, Lukács developed critical readings of several historical novels by authors including Keller, Dickens, and Flaubert. For him, the advent of the "genuinely" historical novel at the beginning of the 19th century is to be read in terms of two developments, or processes. First, the development of a specific genre in a specific medium: the development of the historical novel's unique stylistic and narrative elements. Secondly, the development of a representative, organic artwork capable of capturing the fractures, contradictions, and problems of the particular productive mode of its time [i.e. developing, early, entrenched capitalism].

See also

• Georg Lukács
• Historical fiction
• List of historical novelists
• List of historical novels
• Historical whodunnit
• Historical romance
• Family saga
• Middle Ages in history
• Alternate history
• Historical fantasy
• Walter Scott Prize

External links

• Audio Archives from Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth: 2009 Key West Literary Seminar (accessed 08-2010)
• The Historical Novel Society (accessed 08-2010) - An international organization for historical fiction writers and readers
• HistFiction.net (accessed 08-2010) - A comprehensive list of historical novelists
• A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales (1902). Project Gutenberg etext (accessed 08-2010)
• A selection of historical novels set by epoch and author. (accessed 08-2010)
• An annotated list of historical novels for children and teens Anchorage Public Library (accessed 08-2010)