Not all people agree on this definition, however, and even we occasionally break the rules. Most autobiographical novels would not fit these criteria.
To us, a “historical novel” is a novel which is set fifty or more years in the past, and one in which the author is writing from research rather than personal experience. I will mention that my journal, the Historical Novels Review, has a working definition, which we use for consistency purposes in deciding which books to review. But does it fit what we think of as “historical fiction”? To us, today, the novel is obviously set in our historical past. Should the definition be relative, so that a novel can be considered historical by one reader, but not by someone else? Or, given that ALL novels are set in SOME time period, should we use the broadest definition possible, saying something like, “All novels are historical, but some are more historical than others”?Įven if we can agree on a definition that historical fiction includes any works that are set, for example, more than 50 years in the past, whose past are we talking about – the reader’s past or the author’s past? Take, for example, The Great Gatsby, written in 1925, and set during the same time period. While the usual generic definition – “fiction set in the past” - is true for the most part, this seemingly simple definition brings up a number of questions.įor instance, how far back does a novel have to be set to make it “historical”? A hundred years? Fifty years? Five years? To a reader born in the 1960s, novels set during the Second World War may be considered “suitably historical,” but readers who vividly remember the 1940s may not agree. Let me speak first about a good definition for historical fiction. When you become involved with the field, you begin to learn that above all, historical fiction is a genre of controversy and contradiction. The obvious definition that comes to mind is that historical fiction is simply “fiction set in the past.”īut the reality is, however, that almost everyone – and this includes readers, authors, publishers, agents, and the press - seems to have his or her own idea of what historical fiction is, and also what historical fiction should be. When you first read about this talk in your program, you must have had an idea in mind as to what “historical fiction” was.
The success of recent films such as Gladiator, Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love – all set at various times in the past - demonstrate this interest as well.
More and more authors, even authors who have found success in other genres, are choosing to write historical novels. Over the past few years, author and reader interest in the past has grown. Now is a particularly exciting time to be involved in the field of historical fiction.