Historical novel Quotes

“Lucia Robson's facts can be trusted if, say, you're a teacher assigning her novels as supplemental reading in a history class. “Researching as meticulously as a historian is not an obligation but a necessity,” she tells me. “But I research differently from most historians. I'm looking for details of daily life of the period that might not be important to someone tightly focused on certain events and individuals. Novelists do take conscious liberties by depicting not only what people did but trying to explain why they did it.”She adds, “I depend on the academic research of others when gathering material for my books, but I don't think that my novels should be considered on par with the work of accredited historians. I wouldn't recommend that historians cite historical novels as sources.”And they sure don't. They wouldn't risk the scorn of their colleagues by citing novels. But, Lucia adds:“I think historical fiction and nonfiction work well together. … I'd bet that historical novels lead more readers to check out nonfiction on the subject rather than the other way around,” she says, and then notes:One of the wonderful ironies of writing about history is that making stuff up doesn't mean it's not true. And obversely, declaring something to be true doesn't guarantee that it is. In writing about events that happened a century or more ago, no one knows what historical ‘truth’ is, because no one living today was there.That's right. Weren't there. But will be, once a good historical novelist puts us there.”

“In my long career in this historical fiction business, though, I've found that the most effective storytelling concept is this: Once upon a time it was now.That has become my credo and my method as a longtime historical novelist.It's quite simple, if you see as Janus sees:Today is now.Yesterday was now.Tomorrow will be now.Three hundred years ago, the eighteenth century was now.You, as a historical novelist, can make any time now by taking your reader into that time. Once you grasp that, the rest is just hard work.Stay with me, and you'll see how such work is done.”

“If you don't know what those old occupations were, how they were done, and how they interacted with the passersby, you're not prepared to write a historical novel. A historical figure doesn't pass through a blank countryside. That means you, the novelist, must learn by research what the whole place was like in those times. As much as you can, you must be like someone who has lived there, because you're going to be not just the storyteller but also the tour guide taking your readers through the past.”

“Mortmain is an old French word that should be tattooed on the inside of any historical novelist's skull. This wonderful and terrible word means “dead hand.” Its definition is: “The influence of the past regarded as controlling the present.” (It is also used as a legal term with the same basic meaning.”

“Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history’s illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.”

“As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.”

“Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.”

“I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I'd have to say I'd like to live in the future - I want to see where these centuries of change are leading us.”

“As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.”

“History was my favourite subject at school and in my spare time I read historical novels voraciously from Heidi to the Scarlet Pimpernel and from Georgette Heyer to Agatha Christie.”