Historical Novel

Historical Novel
The term ‘historical novel’ is a type of novel in which the action takes place during a specific
historical period and in which some attempt is made to depict accurately the customs and
mentality of the period. The historical novel not only takes its setting and some characters
and events from history, but makes the historical events and issues crucial for the central
characters and narrative. Some of the greatest historical novels also use the protagonists and
actions to reveal what the author regards as the deep forces that impel the historical process.
The central character of a historical novel—real or imagined—is usually subject to

divided loyalties within a larger historic conflict of which readers know the outcome. The
past tense may be employed in the narration; the account may purport to have been written in
that past time, or in some intervening time. The subject matter of the historical novel tends to
encompass both public and private events, and the protagonist may be either an actual figure
from the past or an invented figure whose destiny is involved with actual events.
The major practitioners of this, the ‘classic’ form of the historical novel in English
and American literature, were Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. The historical
actions in Scott’s ‘Waverley’ and Cooper’s ‘Leatherstocking’ novels largely concerned
social changes of great magnitude – the destruction of the Scottish clans, the impingement of
the settlers on the new land and their conflict with Native Americans.
Scott used historical characters for atmospheres, colour and background; the plot action
is assigned to imaginary personages whom he might manipulate as he would. The range of
Scott’s novel is fairly wide and covers three centuries of English, Scottish and European
history. In The Monastery, the Abbot, Kinilworth, Scott revives 16th century life in
England. In the Legend of Montrose and The Fortunes of Nigel, he takes us to the 17th
century. In Guy Mannering, Old Morality, Rob Roy and the Heart of Midlothian, we have
the recreation of the 18th century. In Ivanhoe, we are transported to the early middle ages and
the days of crusades. Scott used the facts of history for the purpose of romance. He did not
care for strict historical truth. He introduced Shakespeare in Kenilworth though the events
narrated in the novel take place in the 18th year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign when the dramatist
was only 11 years old. Yet he did not disregard the sanctity of historical truth .he presented
historical personages like Richard, Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, James I with great
gusto.
In England, Thackeray carried forward the tradition of the genre, but reached back to connect
it with the comic novels of Fielding and Smollett. Like Scott, Thackeray communicates a
sense of momentous and irretrievable social change, but his dissatisfaction with that which
prevailed in any given situation seems stronger than Scott’s. On the Continent, the successors
to Scott included Manzoni, Pushkin, Gogol, Hugo, Merimée, Stendhal, Balzac and Tolstoy.
Gradually, the interests and techniques of the historical novel began to be applied to
contemporary events and the genre merged with, even as it helped create, the great realistic
novels of the nineteenth century.
Some notable examples of historical novels are Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859), in
Paris and London during the French Revolution; George Eliot's Romola (1863), in Florence
during the Renaissance; Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869), during Napoleon's invasion of
Russia; and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), in Georgia during the Civil War
and Reconstruction. An influential treatment of the form was made by the Marxist scholar
and critic Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (1937; trans. 1962); a comprehensive later
commentary is Harry E. Shaw’s The Forms of Historical Fiction: Sir Walter Scott and His
Successors (1983).
A penchant for the historical novel reappeared at the end of the twentieth century. A. S.
Byatt, whose work is particularly associated with the reinscription of Victorian Britain in
works, such as Possession (1990), Angels and Insects (1992) and The Biographer’s Tale
(1999), writes in one of her essays:
“I believe that postmodern writers are returning to historical fiction because the
idea of writing the Self is felt to be worked out . . . . We like historical persons
because they are unknowable, only partly available to the imagination, and we
find this occluded quality attractive.”
Byatt is referring to authors writing in a fabulist European tradition, such as Lawrence

Norfolk, Penelope Fitzgerald, Peter Ackroyd and Tibor Fischer, but her comments about a
return to history apply to a wide range of literary production around the millennium.

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Historical Novel

The central character of a historical novel—real or imagined—is usually subject to

Byatt is referring to authors writing in a fabulist European tradition, such as Lawrence

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