The History of Historical Fiction, in brief

Homer’s *The Iliad* is one of the earliest known examples of historical fiction in the western world, but the 19th century that literary scholars began to recognize the historical novel as a genre.

What is the history of the English literary genre we know today as “historical fiction?” It turns out the answer to this question is quite complex as many scholars have offered varying pinpoints for its origins. This is because historical fiction (broadly defined as a genre that conveys history through fictional narrative) is capable of encompassing works from nearly every literary form over thousands of years of human history. Ancient epic poetry like Homer’s The Iliad (c.762 BCE), medieval tales like Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale (1476), and renaissance plays like William Shakespeare’s Richard II (1597) are just three examples of some of the farthest reaches of historical fiction in the Western world.

Yet, what’s interesting about these older works is that historical fiction was not actually recognized as a genre during the periods of history in which they were written. While these pieces (among numerous others) certainly influenced the development of the genre as we know it today, many scholars highlight the early nineteenth century as a definitive turning point for historical fiction in the English literary world. This is due to two primary factors—the emergence of a new and popular genre that was contemporarily known as the historical novel, and the subsequent birth of a literary movement called realism (more on this below). Necessary for the debut of both these literary phenomena, however, was the groundbreaking rise of the novel itself.

The Novel

Scholars widely acknowledge Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) as the catalysts that led to the rise of the novel in the English literary world. According to Dr. John Mullan from the University College London, these pioneering works employed for the first time a psychological approach to prose narrative that possessed a “sustained […] fictional account of one individual’s experiences.” Moreover, they included “minute, objective description and circumstantial detail” that emulated reality through fiction in a way that no other genre had done before.[1]

Whereas earlier genres such as travel narratives, biographies, political treatises, novellas, etc., provided readers with birds-eye-views and often exclusionary stories of aristocratic lives, the novel created a space in which readers could explore not only the every-day experiences of ordinary people, but also the internal experiences of the human psyche to which every person could relate. In this way, the novel laid the foundation for a nineteenth-century movement called literary realism, which aimed at drawing audiences away from intangible, fairy-tale-like narratives centered on upper-class, grandiose characters, and toward simple, authentic stories of middle and lower-class individuals and the humanity that connected them all.

The Historical Novel

Historical novels, like Leo Tolstoy’s *War and Peace,* offer explanations of history through the perspectives of common men and women.

The historical novel emerged as an offshoot of the novel itself and, following the same use of realism, offered explanations of history through the perspectives of common men and women. Leo Tolstoy, a nineteenth-century Russian author, touched on this idea in his historical novel, War and Peace:

“The progress of humanity, arising from an innumerable multitude of individual wills, is continuous in motion. The discovery of the laws of this motion is the aim of history. […] For investigation of the laws of history, we must completely change the subject of observations, must let kings and ministers and generals alone, and study the homogeneous, infinitesimal elements by which masses are led.” [2]

Like the advocates of realism during the novel’s budding years, Tolstoy believed history evolved not by the decisions of great historical figures, but rather by the millions of individual minds (great and small) making individual decisions that together affected the progression of historical events. The historical novel provided the literary world with an avenue by which audiences could thoroughly inspect these “individual wills.”

As explained by Hungarian philosopher and critic, Georg Lukacs (1885-1971), in his book, The Historical Novel, the emergence of this new genre denounced a “bird's-eye view of a philosophy of history,” and approached “The organic character of [historical] development [as] a resultant made up of the components of ceaseless class struggles and their bloody resolution in great or small, successful or abortive uprisings.”[3] In other words, whereas earlier genres allowed audiences to inspect the broad tapestry of history, the historical novel permitted audiences to inspect the tiny threads that made it up.

The token work that many scholars recognize as the foundation of the English historical novel is Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), which centers on the Jacobite uprising and subsequent defeat in 1745. In it, Scott explores historical themes through the perspectives of characters in both high and low classes. In doing so, he paints an intimate picture of the Jacobite history by detailing the realities of the people who lived through it.

While Scott himself admitted his work was influenced by preceding historical novels of the era (one primary of which was Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800)), Scott’s Waverley set the standard for the genre upon which following historical novels would base their approach and form.[4] [5] From this beginning emerged sensational works of historical fiction like Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859), George Eliot’s Romola (1862), William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929), Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), and many more that have all contributed to shaping the English literary genre that we know today as historical fiction.

Historical Fiction Beyond England

It is important to note that the previous paragraphs focused solely on the English development of historical fiction through the historical novel. One significant factor not mentioned above is the role that French literature played in the English genre’s development. Many scholars trace the origins of the historical novel, prior to its arrival in England, to seventeenth-century France through the publications of César de Saint-Réal’s Don Carlos (1672), his essay De l'usage de l'histoire (1671), as well as Madame de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678).[6] [7] These pieces certainly played a major part in the development of historical fiction at large, and English writers would often read French literature, adopting similar tactics for their own works. There are also innumerous social, political, economic, and cultural factors that led to the movement of literary realism which encouraged the popularity of the historical novel.

Additionally, some scholars have devoted works to tracing the roots of historical fiction beyond the historical novel and to ancient titles like Xenophon's Cyropaedia (370 BC), among others.[8] Outside Europe, historical fiction can be found in ancient and more recent texts across the globe. It is evident the history of historical fiction is wildly complex, and there are scores of factors that played into its development over the years. For more extensive research into the origins of the genre, below are four noteworthy books on the subject:

The Historical Novel (1895) by George Saintsbury

The Historical Novel (1955) Georg Lukacs

The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650-1950 (2009) by Richard Maxwell

The Historical Novel (2009) by Jerome de Groot

Citations and References:

1. John Mullan, “The rise of the novel,” The British Library, June 21, 2018.

2. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Constance Garnett, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2005), 753.

3. Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 32.

4. Stephen Greenblatt, ed., “Sir Walter Scott,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, 10th Edition, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018), 423-24.

5. Julie Nash, ed., “Introduction” in Castle Rackrent, (Ontario, Broadview Press, 2018), 9.

6. Richard Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

7. Matthew J. Phillpott, “A Novel Approaches prelude: A Brief History of Historical Fiction,” IHR Digital, November 3, 2011.