The Rewarding Duty of the Historical Novelist: Finding the Facts, Then the Truth
Historical novels are unique as a genre. They embody all the challenges and delights of fiction generally but the bones that hold the body of the novel together have to be true to the age of the story. When those bones are given the flesh of an engaging tale the result is a novel that takes the reader closer to our history than most history texts.
(Tips on Writing Authentic Scenes in Historical Fiction.)
Given the sterile nature of those texts and the lamentable state of history literacy today—history test scores are the lowest in decades—historical novels may be the best vehicle for leading modern readers back to our past. As Rudyard Kipling observed, “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
The genre that provides those stories has evolved significantly in recent decades. In the words of the late Hilary Mantel, there was a time when “people who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn’t want them pegged as historical novels.” Like the mystery genre, readers were not inclined to treat such novels as literature, and indeed many were primarily romance or adventure, light on facts and long on escapism.
But with entries in the 1980s like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth the genre became much more popular, attracting a larger, and more serious, audience. Patrick O’Brian’s historical maritime series, the Aubrey-Maturin chronicles, finally got the attention it richly deserved. Remarkable and very diverse works by such writers as Hilary Mantel, C.J. Sansom, Caleb Carr, Philippa Gregory, and Anthony Doerr demonstrated the breadth of the genre and overwhelmed any earlier suggestion that historical fiction was not serious literature.
That transformation made the work of the historical novelist more exciting but also more challenging. Expectations of authenticity rose commensurately. The new, expanded readership is inquisitive and well-educated, as eager to learn as they are to be entertained, an important aspect of the genre that is too often overlooked. The joy of reading Mantel’s Wolf Hall, or Sansom’s Shardlake series, for example, isn’t just in the intriguing plot and characters, it is also about the vivid descriptions of life and society in Tudor times.
This is the factual scaffolding that make these novels so rewarding to experience. Plot and characters are constructed around a kaleidoscopic backdrop, encompassing dress, vernacular, cuisine, architecture, street life, social trends, courtly intrigues, and the myriad other elements that underpin and define the age. Authenticity is a must. Put Henry VIII in a suit and tie driving a steam buggy and it isn’t historical fiction, it’s fantasy, aimed at an entirely different market.
The great challenge of the genre arises in this implicit tension between fact and fiction. The serious historical fiction author must see that the fiction doesn’t impinge on the facts. Maintaining this balance is the true art of the genre. In her deep research into the Tudors, Mantel consulted chronicles that told her what Thomas Cromwell did but had few resources to tell her what he thought or how he conducted himself in personal, sometimes intimate interactions. She had to be faithful to the former in constructing the latter.
My own first series, set in modern Tibet, is so deeply entrenched in tradition and history that it shares this aspect. When I described an imperial Chinese robe from two centuries ago, I engaged in careful research to assure that I was accurate about the design, color, and imagery of the robe—the emperor and his mandarins were fastidious about such things.
Authenticity in historical novels has become a covenant between author and reader, an implied promise that what is presented is consistent with known fact. Yet the novelist also needs to assure that the facts don’t impinge too far on the fiction. As Hilary Mantel declared, “If I have a maxim, it is that there isn’t any necessary conflict between good history and good drama.”
Check out Eliot Pattison’s Freedom’s Ghost here:
(WD uses affiliate links)
I have learned much more about the Napoleonic Wars from reading the novels of O’Brian and Bernard Cornwell—creative masterpieces constructed on solid factual foundations—than I ever learned from history texts. This is how history gets internalized, this is how the past migrates from our brain to our heart. The past after all was not a series of charts and memorized dates. The past was where our DNA resided before it reached us. The past was us, or people much like us, seeking fulfilling lives with many of our own motives, aspirations, and challenges.
Historical fiction thus becomes such a potent way to learn history. Therein lies the real art, the creative juxtaposition of the factual and the merely believable. In that sense the historical novelist brings us closer to our past, evoking a more human connection, than history itself.
At its best, historical fiction cuts through the fog of time, filling in the ambiguous spaces left in historical chronicles. Those chronicles may tell us about the momentous events of the Tudor court and even the acts of Thomas Cromwell, for example, but not about what he ate, how he dressed, or how he spoke with his loved ones. Knowing that Hilary Mantel was accurate with the reported, macro, aspects of his life means we can trust her with these micro details. The result is a satisfying journey, on which we learn not just how historical events unfolded, but how history feels.
Passage on one of Patrick O’Brian’s frigates springs to vibrant life because he was able to extrapolate his vast knowledge of British navy rules, knots, rigging, ship’s cuisine, songs, battle orders, curses, and a thousand other details to give us a visceral connection to those who walked those decks, so real we can smell the salt spray. Such writers help us understand the past at a much deeper level than any history text. This is the reward, the duty, and the artistry of this wonderful genre. Sometimes it takes fiction to get to the truth.