History up to 17th century Historical prose fiction has a long tradition in world literature. Three of the
Four Classics of
Chinese novels were set in the distant past:
Shi Nai'an's 14th-century
Water Margin concerns 12th-century outlaws;
Luo Guanzhong's 14th-century
Romance of the Three Kingdoms concerns 3rd-century wars which ended the
Han dynasty;
Wu Cheng'en's 16th-century
Journey to the West concerns the 7th-century Buddhist pilgrim
Xuanzang. In addition to those, there was a wealth of historical novels that became popular in the literary circles during the Ming and Qing periods in Chinese history; they include
Feng Menglong's
Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi (
Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms),
Luo Maodeng's
Sanbao taijian xiyang ji, Sun Gaoliang's
Yu Shaobao cui zhong quanzhuan,
Chu Renhuo's
Sui Tang yanyi (
Romance of the Sui and Tang dynasties),
Xiong Damu's
Liang Song Nanbei Zhizhuan (
Records of the Two Songs, South and North) and
Quan han zhi zhuan,
Yang Erzeng's
Dong Xi Jin yan yi (
Romance of the Eastern and Western Jin dynasties), the anonymous
Ying Lie Zhuan, and Qian Cai's
The General Yue Fei, etc.
Classical Greek novelists were also "very fond of writing novels about people and places of the past".
The Iliad has been described as historic fiction, since it treats historic events, although its genre is generally considered
epic poetry.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet has suggested that
Plato laid the foundations for the historical novel through the myth of
Atlantis contained in his dialogues
Timaeus and
Critias.
The Tale of Genji (written before 1021) is a fictionalized account of Japanese court life about a century prior and its author asserted that her work could present a "fuller and therefore 'truer version of history. One of the early examples of the historical novel in Europe is
La Princesse de Clèves, a French novel published anonymously in March 1678. It is regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the
psychological novel and as a great work. Its author generally is held to be
Madame de La Fayette. The action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France. The novel recreates that era with remarkable precision. Nearly every character – except the heroine – is a historical figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great faithfulness to documentary records. In the United Kingdom, the historical novel "appears to have developed" from
La Princesse de Clèves, "and then via the
Gothic novel". Another early example is
The Unfortunate Traveller by
Thomas Nashe, published in 1594 and set during the reign of
King Henry VIII.
19th century by Leo Tolstoy, published 1869 and set 60 years before Historical fiction rose to prominence in Europe during the early 19th century as part of the
Romantic reaction to the
Enlightenment, especially through the influence of the Scottish writer
Sir Walter Scott, whose works were immensely popular throughout Europe. Among his early European followers we can find
Willibald Alexis,
Theodor Fontane,
Bernhard Severin Ingemann,
Miklós Jósika,
Mór Jókai,
Jakob van Lennep,
Carl Jonas Love Almqvist,
Victor Rydberg,
Andreas Munch,
Alessandro Manzoni,
Alfred de Vigny,
Honoré de Balzac or
Prosper Mérimée.
Jane Porter's 1803 novel
Thaddeus of Warsaw is one of the earliest examples of the historical novel in English and went through at least 84 editions, including translation into French and German. The first true historical novel in English was in fact
Maria Edgeworth's
Castle Rackrent (1800). In the 20th century
György Lukács argued that Scott was the first fiction writer who saw history not just as a convenient frame in which to stage a contemporary narrative, but rather as a distinct social and cultural setting. Scott's
Scottish novels such as
Waverley (1814) and
Rob Roy (1817) focused upon a middling character who sits at the intersection of various social groups in order to explore the development of society through conflict.
Ivanhoe (1820) gained credit for renewing interest in the
Middle Ages. Many well-known writers from the United Kingdom published historical novels in the mid 19th century, the most notable include
Thackeray's
Vanity Fair,
Charles Dickens's
A Tale of Two Cities,
George Eliot's
Romola, and
Charles Kingsley's
Westward Ho! and
Hereward the Wake.
The Trumpet-Major (1880) is
Thomas Hardy's only historical novel, and is set in
Weymouth during the
Napoleonic Wars, when the town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. In the United States, the first historical novelist was
Samuel Woodworth, who wrote
The Champions of American Freedom in 1816.
James Fenimore Cooper was better known for his historical novels and was influenced by Scott. His most famous novel is
The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826), the second book of the
Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy.
The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the
French and Indian War (the
Seven Years' War), when France and
Great Britain battled for control of North America. Cooper's chief rival,
John Neal, wrote
Rachel Dyer (1828), the first bound novel about the 17th-century
Salem witch trials.
Rachel Dyer also influenced future American fiction set in this period, like
The Scarlet Letter (1850) by
Nathaniel Hawthorne which is one of the most famous 19th-century American historical novels. Set in 17th-century
Puritan Boston, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of
Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of
repentance and dignity. In French literature, the most prominent inheritor of Scott's style of the historical novel was
Balzac. In 1829 Balzac published
Les Chouans, a historical work in the manner of Sir Walter Scott. This was subsequently incorporated into
La Comédie Humaine. The bulk of
La Comédie Humaine, however, takes place during the
Bourbon Restoration and the
July Monarchy, though there are several novels which take place during the
French Revolution and others which take place of in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, including
About Catherine de Medici and
The Elixir of Long Life.
Victor Hugo's
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) furnishes another 19th-century example of the romantic-historical novel. Victor Hugo began writing
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1829, largely to make his contemporaries more aware of the value of the
Gothic architecture, which was neglected and often destroyed to be replaced by new buildings, or defaced by replacement of parts of buildings in a newer style. The action takes place in 1482 and the title refers to the
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered.
Alexandre Dumas also wrote several popular historical fiction novels, including
The Count of Monte Cristo and
The Three Musketeers.
George Saintsbury stated: "
Monte Cristo is said to have been at its first appearance, and for some time subsequently, the most popular book in Europe." This popularity has extended into modern times as well. The book was "translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it ... as well as several television series, and many movies [have] worked the name 'Monte Cristo' into their titles." Tolstoy's
War and Peace offers an example of 19th-century historical fiction used to critique contemporary history. Tolstoy read the standard histories available in Russian and French about the
Napoleonic Wars, and used the novel to challenge those historical approaches. At the start of the novel's third volume, he describes his work as blurring the line between fiction and history, in order to get closer to the truth. The novel is set 60 years before it was composed, and alongside researching the war through primary and secondary sources, he spoke with people who had lived through war during the
French invasion of Russia in 1812; thus, the book is also, in part,
ethnography fictionalized.
The Betrothed was inspired by Walter Scott's
Ivanhoe but, compared to its model, shows some innovations (two members of the lower class as principal characters, the past described without romantic idealization, an explicitly Christian message), somehow forerunning the realistic novel of the following decades. Set in northern Italy in 1628, during the oppressive years under Spanish rule, it is sometimes seen as a veiled attack on Austria, which controlled the region at the time the novel was written. The critical and popular success of
The Betrothed gave rise to a crowd of imitations and, in the age of
unification, almost every Italian writer tried his hand at the genre; novels now almost forgotten, like
Marco Visconti by
Tommaso Grossi (Manzoni's best friend) or
Ettore Fieramosca by
Massimo D'Azeglio (Manzoni's son-in-law), were the best-sellers of their time. Many of these authors, such as
Niccolò Tommaseo,
Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi and D'Azeglio himself, were patriots and politicians too, and in their novels, the veiled politic message of Manzoni became explicit (the hero of
Ettore Fieramosca fights to defend the honor of the Italian soldiers, mocked by some arrogant Frenchmen). In them, the narrative talent not equaled the patriotic passion, and their novels, full of rhetoric and melodramatic excesses, are today barely readable as historical documents. A significant exception is
The Confessions of an Italian by
Ippolito Nievo, an epic about the
Venetian republic's fall and the
Napoleonic age, told with satiric irony and youthful brio (Nievo wrote it when he was 26 years old). In Arabic literature, the Lebanese writer
Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914) was the most prolific novelist of this genre. He wrote 23 historical novels between 1889 and 1914. His novels played an important in shaping the collective consciousness of modern Arabs during the
Nahda period and educated them about their history.
The Fleeing Mamluk (1891),
The Captive of the Mahdi Pretender (1892), and
Virgin of Quraish (1899) are some of his nineteenth-century historical novels.
20th century Germany A major 20th-century example of this genre is the German author
Thomas Mann's
Buddenbrooks (1901). This chronicles the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the
Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877. Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the
Mann family of
Lübeck, and their milieu. This was Mann's first novel, and with the publication of the 2nd edition in 1903,
Buddenbrooks became a major literary success. The work led to a
Nobel Prize in Literature for Mann in 1929; although the Nobel award generally recognizes an author's body of work, the Swedish Academy's citation for Mann identified "his great novel
Buddenbrooks" as the principal reason for his prize. Mann also wrote, between 1926 and 1943, a four-part novel
Joseph and His Brothers. In it Mann retells the familiar biblical stories of
Genesis, from
Jacob to
Joseph (chapters 27–50), setting it in the historical context of the reign of
Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC) in
ancient Egypt. In the same era,
Lion Feuchtwanger was one of the most popular and accomplished writers of historical novels, with publications between the 1920s and 1950s. His reputation began with the bestselling work,
Jud Süß (1925), set in the eighteenth century, as well as historical novels written primarily in exile in France and California, including most prominently the
Josephus trilogy set in Ancient Rome (1932 / 1935 / 1942),
Goya (1951), and his novel
Raquel: The Jewess of Toledo - set in Medieval Spain.
Britain Robert Graves of Britain wrote several popular historical novels, including
I, Claudius,
King Jesus,
The Golden Fleece and
Count Belisarius.
John Cowper Powys wrote two historical novels set in Wales,
Owen Glendower (1941) and
Porius (1951). The first deals with the rebellion of the Welsh Prince
Owain Glyndŵr (AD 1400–16), while
Porius takes place during the Dark Ages, in AD 499, just before the
Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. Powys suggests parallels with these historical periods and Britain in the late 1930s and during
World War II. Other significant British novelists include
Georgette Heyer,
Naomi Mitchison and
Mary Renault. Heyer essentially established the
historical romance genre and its subgenre
Regency romance, which was inspired by
Jane Austen. To ensure accuracy, Heyer collected reference works and kept detailed notes on all aspects of Regency life. While some critics thought the novels were too detailed, others considered the level of detail to be Heyer's greatest asset; Heyer even recreated
William the Conqueror's crossing into England for her novel
The Conqueror. Naomi Mitchison's finest novel,
The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931), is regarded by some as the best historical novel of the 20th century. Mary Renault is best known for her historical novels set in
Ancient Greece. In addition to fictional portrayals of
Theseus,
Socrates,
Plato,
Simonides of Ceos and
Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander.
The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) by
J. G. Farrell has been described as an "outstanding novel". Inspired by events such as the sieges of
Cawnpore and
Lucknow, the book details the siege of a fictional Indian town, Krishnapur, during the
Indian Rebellion of 1857 from the perspective of the town's
British residents. The main characters find themselves subject to the increasing strictures and deprivation of the siege, and the absurdity of maintaining the British class system in a town no one can leave becomes a source of comic invention, though the text is serious in intent and tone. In Welsh literature, the major contributor to the genre in Welsh is
William Owen Roberts (b. 1960). His historical novels include
Y Pla (1987), set at the time of the Black Death;
Paradwys (2001), 18th century, concerning the slave trade; and
Petrograd (2008) and
Paris (2013), concerning the Russian revolution and its aftermath.
Y Pla has been much translated, appearing in English as
Pestilence, and
Petrograd and
Paris have also appeared in English. A contemporary of Roberts' working in English is
Christopher Meredith (b. 1954), whose
Griffri (1991) is set in the 12th century and has the poet of a minor Welsh prince as narrator. Nobel Prize laureate
William Golding wrote a number of historical novels.
The Inheritors (1955) is set in
prehistoric times, and shows "new people" (generally identified with
Homo sapiens sapiens) triumphing over a gentler race (generally identified with
Neanderthals) by deceit and violence.
The Spire (1964) follows the building (and near collapse) of a huge spire onto a medieval cathedral (generally assumed to be
Salisbury Cathedral); the spire symbolizing both spiritual aspiration and worldly vanity.
The Scorpion God (1971) consists of three novellas, the first set in a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer band (
Clonk, Clonk), the second in an ancient Egyptian court (
The Scorpion God) and the third in the court of a Roman emperor (
Envoy Extraordinary). The trilogy
To the Ends of the Earth, which includes the
Rites of Passage (1980),
Close Quarters (1987), and
Fire Down Below (1989), describes sea voyages in the early 19th century.
Anthony Burgess also wrote several historical novels; his last novel,
A Dead Man in Deptford, is about the murder of
Christopher Marlowe in the 16th century. Though the genre has evolved since its inception, the historical novel remains popular with authors and readers to this day and bestsellers include
Patrick O'Brian's
Aubrey–Maturin series,
Ken Follett's
Pillars of the Earth and
Dorothy Dunnett's
Lymond Chronicles. A development in British and Irish writing in the past 25 years has been a renewed interest in the
First World War. Works include
William Boyd's
An Ice-Cream War;
Sebastian Faulks'
Birdsong and ''
The Girl at the Lion d'Or'' (concerned with the War's consequences);
Pat Barker's
Regeneration Trilogy and
Sebastian Barry's
A Long Long Way.
United States , 1906–1908 by
Ford Madox Ford, is written about the
16th century. American Nobel laureate
William Faulkner's novel
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is set before, during and after the
American Civil War.
Kenneth Roberts wrote several books set around the events of the American Revolution, of which
Northwest Passage (1937),
Oliver Wiswell (1940) and
Lydia Bailey (1947) all became best-sellers in the
1930s and
1940s. The following American authors have also written historical novels in the 20th century:
Gore Vidal,
John Barth,
Norman Mailer,
E. L. Doctorow and
William Kennedy.
Thomas Pynchon's historical novel
Mason & Dixon (1997) tells the story of the two English surveyors, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were charged with marking the boundary between
Pennsylvania and
Maryland in the 18th century. More recently there have been works such as
Neal Stephenson's
Baroque Cycle, and Grant Maierhofer's
Traumnovelle, which imagines the life of Anatoli Bugorski, around the incident wherein he unwittingly stuck his head inside of a particle accelerator in 1978.
Italy In Italy, the tradition of historical fiction has flourished in the modern age, the nineteenth century in particular having caught writers' interests. Southern Italian novelists like
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (
The Leopard),
Francesco Iovine (
Lady Ava),
Carlo Alianello (
The Heritage of the Prioress) and more recently
Andrea Camilleri (
The Preston Brewer) retold the events of the
Italian Unification, at times overturning its traditionally heroic and progressive image. The conservative
Riccardo Bacchelli in
The Devil at the Long Point and the communist
Vasco Pratolini in
Metello described, from ideologically opposite points of view, the birth of
Italian Socialism. Bacchelli also wrote
The Mill on the Po, a patchwork
saga of a family of millers from the time of
Napoleon to the
First World War, one of the most epic novels of the last century. In 1980,
Umberto Eco achieved international success with
The Name of the Rose, a novel set in an Italian abbey in 1327 readable as a historical mystery, as an allegory of Italy during the
Years of Lead, and as an erudite joke. Eco's work, like Manzoni's preceding it, relaunched Italian interest in historical fiction. Many novelists who till then had preferred the contemporary novel tried their hand at stories set in previous centuries. Among them were
Fulvio Tomizza (
The Evil Coming from North, about the
Reformation),
Dacia Maraini (
The Silent Duchess, about the female condition in the eighteenth century),
Sebastiano Vassalli (
The Chimera, about a
witch hunt),
Ernesto Ferrero (
N) and
Valerio Manfredi (
The Last Legion).
Bulgaria Fani Popova–Mutafova (1902–1977) was a Bulgarian author who is considered by many to have been the best-selling Bulgarian historical fiction author ever. Her books sold in record numbers in the 1930s and the early 1940s.
Stoyan Zagorchinov (1889–1969) also a Bulgarian writer, author of "Last Day, God's Day" trilogy and "
Ivaylo", continuing the tradition in the Bulgarian historical novel, led by
Ivan Vazov.
Yana Yazova (1912–1974) also has several novels that can be considered historical as "
Alexander of Macedon", her only novel on non-Bulgarian thematic, as well as her trilogy "
Balkani".
Vera Mutafchieva (1929–2009) is the author of historical novels which were translated into 11 languages.
Anton Donchev (1930–) is an old living author, whose first independent novel, ''Samuel's Testimony
, was published in 1961. His second book, Time of Parting'', which dealt with the Islamization of the population in the Rhodopes during the XVII century was written in 1964. The novel was adapted in the serial movie "
Time of Violence", divided into two parts with the subtitles ("The Threat" and "The Violence") by 1987 by the director Lyudmil Staykov. In June 2015, "
Time of Violence" was chosen as the most beloved film of Bulgarian viewers in "Laced Shoes of Bulgarian Cinema", a large-scale consultation with the audience of
Bulgarian National Television.
Scandinavia One of the best known Scandinavian historical novels is
Sigrid Undset's
Kristin Lavransdatter (1920–1922) set in medieval Norway. For this trilogy Undset was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928.
Johannes V. Jensen's trilogy
Kongens fald (1900–1901, "The Fall of the King"), set in 16th century Denmark, has been called "the finest historical novel in Danish literature". The epic historical novel series
Den lange rejse (1908–1921, "The Long Journey") is generally regarded as Jensen's masterpiece and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1944 partly on the strength of it. The Finnish writer
Mika Waltari is known for the historical novel
The Egyptian (1945). Faroes–Danish writer
William Heinesen wrote several historical novels, most notably
Det gode håb (1964, "Fair Hope") set in the
Faroe Islands in 17th century. Historical fiction has long been a popular genre in Sweden, especially since the 1960s a huge number of historical novels has been written. Nobel laureates
Eyvind Johnson and
Pär Lagerkvist wrote acclaimed historical novels such as
Return to Ithaca (1946) and
Barabbas (1950).
Vilhelm Moberg's
Ride This Night (1941) is set in 16th century
Småland and his widely read novel series
The Emigrants tells the story of Småland emigrants to the United States in the 19th century.
Per Anders Fogelström wrote a hugely popular series of five historical novels set in his native Stockholm beginning with
City of My Dreams (1960). Other writers of historical fiction in Swedish literature include
Sara Lidman,
Birgitta Trotzig,
Per Olov Enquist and
Artur Lundkvist.
Latin America The historical novel was quite popular in 20th century
Latin American literature, including works such as
The Kingdom of This World (1949) by
Alejo Carpentier,
I, the Supreme (1974) by
Augusto Roa Bastos,
Terra Nostra (1975) by
Carlos Fuentes,
News from the Empire (1987) by
Fernando del Paso,
The Lightning of August (1964) by
Jorge Ibargüengoitia,
The War of the End of the World (1981) by
Mario Vargas Llosa and
The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) by
Gabriel García Marquez. Other writers of historical fiction include
Abel Posse,
Antonio Benitez Rojo,
João Ubaldo Ribeiro,
Jorge Amado,
Homero Aridjis.
21st century In the first decades of the 21st century, an increased interest for historical fiction has been noted. One of the most successful writers of historical novels is
Hilary Mantel. Other writers of historical fiction include
Philippa Gregory,
Bernard Cornwell,
Sarah Waters,
Ken Follett,
George Saunders,
Shirley Hazzard and
Julie Orringer. The historical novel
The Books of Jacob set in 18th century Poland has been praised as the
magnum opus by the
2018 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate
Olga Tokarczuk. On January 1, 2021 a group of award-winning authors of English-language historical fiction set in France formed the collaboration known as France's Splendid Centuries. The collaboration has included Michele Callard, Rozsa Gaston, Jules Larimore, Keira Morgan, and Tracey Warr, who are members of the
Historical Novel Society known for increasing awareness on the popularity of French history in fiction novels. ==Subgenres==