Historical Fiction and Authors

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

I'll admit a bias for speculative fiction (fantasy/sci-fi/horror), but recently, I've started to get a taste for historical fiction. I guess it's always been there, considering that quite a bit of what I read can be considered historical fiction now, but until now, it's not been something I've given much thought to. How much of it do you all read? What's some of your favorite time periods to revisit? Why do you read it, if you do?

For me, I think it's connected to my interest in fantasy, in that it's a fascination with the past. I don't want to say that I have no interest in the future, but stories of the past have more resonation with me; I still like contemporary fiction, but my lifelong-ish fascination with history has been more of a driving force.

So who are some of your favorite writers of historical fiction? What are some of your favorite works? What influence does it have on your life, if any?

I'm going to step away for a bit, but when I come back, I'll give you a list of some significant writers in the genre to get the conversation going.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

So, historical fiction has been around almost as long as civilization has had a past, told through epic poetry and other means; it wasn't until the early 19th century that it had developed into a significant Western literary genre. From that point on, the use of the past for entertainment became quite common, with quite a few masters in the field. I've mentioned it before in another thread, but I'll just restate here (with some additions) that some of my favorite historical topics to cover are:

-the Mesopotamian/Israeli/Arabic regions
-the Greek and Roman Empires
-the Celts and Vikings
-England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, India, China, Japan, and the Americas (no one point in time in particular)
-the "Golden Age" of piracy
-the Age of Discovery
-the development of philosophy and science
-the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the "Wild West"
-Native Americans and their cultures, across all the Americas

With that in mind, here are some authors to look out for.

WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)
One of the most popular authors of his day, Scott pretty much invented the modern historical novel with his disparate Waverley sequence, which covered both Scottish and English history in classics such as Waverley, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Quentin Durward, Redgauntlet, and others.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1950-1894)
Stevenson gained near-instant acclaim with his classic pirate adventure Treasure Island and went on to write other historical works covering the War of the Roses (The Black Arrow) and the Scottish Jacobite Rebellion (Kidnapped and The Master of Ballantrae), becoming one of the most beloved storytellers in the English language.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851)
Cooper, one of the most significant early American writers, captured the country's nostalgic yearnings for a rapidly disappearing landscape with his five-volume Leatherstocking Tales, recounting the life of frontiersman Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo in The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer.

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)
While most of his work can now be read as such, the man regarded as the greatest of Victorian novelists only wrote two proper historical novels: Barnaby Rudge, set during the Gordon Riots of 1780, and A Tale of Two Cities, the perennial favorite of so many and one of the best-selling novels of all time, set during the French Revolution and leading up to the Reign of Terror.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS (1802-1870)
The grand maestro of the adventure novel and one of the most widely read French novelists in the world, Dumas captured the attention of the age in his sprawling tales of political intrigue and swashbuckling romance such as The Count of Monte Cristo and the d'Artagnan Romances - The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later, the latter work being so large that English editions are usually divided into three individual parts (The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask).

VICTOR HUGO (1802-1855)
Dumas's more "literary" counterpart, Hugo is one of the greatest poets in his native country, known outside of France for the great medieval Romantic classic Notre-Dame de Paris (usually translated in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and his masterpiece, Les Misérables, a tale of redemption and revolution following a repentant thief and his chase by a relentless policeman set against the backdrop of the downfall of Napoleon and the June Rebellion of 1832.

ALESSANDRO MANZONI (1785-1873)
Regarded as one of the most important Italian novelists, Manzoni's best-known work, The Betrothed, set during the Spanish rule of 1628, is considered to be the definitive Italian novel and a paradigm of the language, still widely taught in schools to this day.

MADAME DE LA FAYETTE (1634-1693)
This French noblewoman can lay claim along with Cervantes to be the author of one of the earliest examples of the novel with La Princess de Clèves, a meticulously detailed story of a young heiress's pursuit of love in the court of Henry II of France.

STENDHAL (1783-1842)
Stendhal, pen-name of Marie-Henri Beyle, was one of the forerunners of psychological realism with The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, both novels being largely influential to both contemporary and future writers.

LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910)
Considered to be one of the greatest writers in the world, Tolstoy's legendary tome War and Peace, set during Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia, remains one of the towering classics of fiction, covering all walks of life through hundreds of characters.

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ (1846-1916)
Winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature, Sienkiewicz is best known in his native Poland for his "Trilogy" - With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Fire in the Steppe - recounting important 17th-century military campaigns, written to bolster national confidence; in other countries, his fame rests on Quo Vadis, a story of Rome during the time of Nero following a love between a Christian woman and a Roman patrician.

LEW WALLACE (1827-1905)
A Union general during the Civil War and later governor of the New Mexico territory, Lew Wallace is best remembered for penning one of the influential Christian novels of the 19th century, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, in which a Jewish prince, falsely accused, escapes his confinement and plots revenge against the Roman centurion who betrayed him, finding his life intertwined with that of Jesus.

R. D. BLACKMORE (1825-1900)
Perhaps the last great Victorian novelist, known for his powers of description, most of Blackmore's work has fallen out of print, except for one: the perennial favorite Lorna Doone, a tale of romance in the province of 17th-century Exmoor.

SIGRID UNDSET (1882-1949)
Another Nobel winner, Undset poured deep research into her 3-volume novel Kristin Lavransdatter, which follows a young woman's religious conversion in 14th-century Norway, somewhat controversial in its time for its treatment of sexual content.

ROBERT GRAVES (1895-1985)
Probably best known for his poetry and his study of Irish mythology and Greek myths, Robert Graves is also known for his popular historical novels such as his "autobiography" of the Roman Julio-Claudian dynasty through the eyes of Claudius - I, Claudius and Claudius the God - as well as King Jesus and Count Belisarius.

C. S. FORESTER (1899-1966)
While he wrote other novels of naval warfare set during the contemporary World Wars, Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, known to book readers as Cecil Scott Forester, is best remembered for his 12-volume series set during the height of the Napoleonic Wars and following the rising career of daring Navy officer Horatio Hornblower, which became longstanding favorites of the 20th century.

RAFAEL SABATINI (1875-1950)
Born to opera singers, the Italian-English novelist Sabatini was a 20th-century Dumas, writing romances and swashbucklers loved worldwide, set throughout history in periods such as Barbary Spain (The Sea Hawk), revolutionary France (Scaramouche), and the 17th-century Caribbean (Captain Blood).

BORIS PASTERNAK (1890-1960)
Better known in his native Russia as one of the greatest contemporary poets, Pasternak's fame in other nations rests on Doctor Zhivago, the story of a physician/poet's life from the October Revolution to World War II.

GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA (1896-1957)
The last member of a minor Italian nobility, Lampedusa earned acclaim for his posthumously published sole novel, The Leopard, which chronicled the drastic changes in Sicilian life during the 19th-century unification of Italy - the Risorgimento; it is regarded as one of the most important modern Italian novels.

PATRICK O'BRIAN (1914-2000)
After a lifetime of work, O'Brian earned fame late in life, when, following in the footsteps of Forester, he commenced on the Aubrey-Maturin sequence, a much admired collection of 20 completed novels (and 1 unfinished) centered on the lives and friendship of rugged captain Jack Aubrey and ships surgeon/intelligence agent Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Wars, noted for its attention to detail and its dedication to naval jargon, regarded as essential to the modern English canon.

BERNARD CORNWELL (1944- )
Cornwell as written numerous series covering English history, set during the Arthurian age, the Saxon era of Alfred the Great, and the Grail quest of the Hundred Years' War, but his best-known work, written as a response to Forester's novels, focuses on Napoleonic rifleman Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles unit during the Iberian Peninsular Wars.

UMBERTO ECO (1932-2016)
One of the most highly respected intellectuals of the modern age, Eco was famous for his erudite, complex novels, the most widely known being The Name of the Rose, which follows a methodological, Holmesian Franciscan monk investigating a murder in a monastery set in the 14th century; blending semiotics and literary theory with fiction, it became of the world's best-selling books and won several international awards.

FRANS G. BENGTSSON (1894-1954)
Although his magnum opus was a biography of Sweden's King Charles XII, Bengtsson became widely known for The Long Ships, a Viking adventure of the 10th century recounting the life of a young man abducted by the ravaging Northmen and his subsequent voyages in the Mediterranean.


That's quite a lot of authors, more than I was planning on getting to, and I have quite a few more in mind, as well (no surprise, I guess). But for now, I hope that gives a wide berth of history to check out. So who have you heard of and who's new to you?