Name Up to Three Historical Novels You Like a Lot
- Thread starter Extollager
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I tend not to think of fiction written in the now about events only 40 or so years previous as historical, but ...
Finally realized two other novels I enjoy are at least technically historical fiction: Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. Less enjoyable but maybe even more formidable, James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. Given Ellroy's works are mainly set in the 1960s or before, he's an historical novelist.
Finally realized two other novels I enjoy are at least technically historical fiction: Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley. Less enjoyable but maybe even more formidable, James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. Given Ellroy's works are mainly set in the 1960s or before, he's an historical novelist.
Chris von shannow
Well-Known Member
Warlord Bernard Cornwell
Azincourt Bernard Cornwell
Warriors of the dragongold Ray Bryant
Azincourt Bernard Cornwell
Warriors of the dragongold Ray Bryant
Ian Fortytwo
A Poet, Writer and eclectic Reader.
Almost all of Bernard Cornwell.
I do like his Sharpe series.
Next anything written by Alexandre Dumas.
I do like his Sharpe series.
Next anything written by Alexandre Dumas.
Christine Wheelwright
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I have a soft spot for the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser (although not considered PC these days).
Dickens would be another (Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol being personal favorites)
Conrad also (The Secret Agent and Heart of Darkness in particular.....perhaps the most accessible of his works)
Dickens would be another (Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol being personal favorites)
Conrad also (The Secret Agent and Heart of Darkness in particular.....perhaps the most accessible of his works)
Logan Selmes
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Shogun, Taipan, and Whirlwind by James Clavell.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (especially the audio book)
I Claudius by Robert Graves
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (especially the audio book)
I Claudius by Robert Graves
Extollager
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It's up to the membership if the desire is to expand away from the original posting, but maybe a separate thread could be started for "recent history" nominations, nonfiction, etc. so that this thread will be most useful to people looking for historical fiction. From the first posting:
Requested here are historical novels written as such; the author understood himself or herself to be writing a novel set in an identifiable past time and a known place. To qualify as "historical," the novel should be set at least 100 years ago from our own time (not necessarily the author's time, provided the qualification just stated is kept in mind. (Please do not suggest science fiction and fantasy novels (time travel), such as by Connie Willis, etc.)
I'll take this opportunity to mention two more by Janet Lewis: The Wife of Martin Guerre and The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron (which isn't a ghost story), and seven novels by Sigrid Undset; the Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy and the Olav Audunsson Quartet.
One of these days I mean to read Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes by Baring-Gould, set "at the close of the eighteenth century." There was a reprint a while ago with a foreword by John Fowles. To quote an internet source:
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924), was one of the most remarkable literary figures of his age. Theologian, hymn-writer, archaeologist, folk-song collector, poet, hagiologist, historian, antiquarian and novelist, he was responsible at one time for more books in the British Museum Library than any other author. Mehalah: a Story of the Salt Marshes (1880) was one of his first novels and created something of a sensation, being compared by Swinburne to Wuthering Heights: if it had not been followed by thirty others, distinctly inferior, Baring-Gould might well today enjoy a greater reputation than he does. Nevertheless, though nowadays largely forgotten, Mehalah remains an astonishing achievement: could this grim tale really have come from the pen of the man who wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the 16-volume Lives of the Saints? As rector of East Mersea from 1871 to 1881 Baring-Gould got to know well the marshland and riverscape that he describes so hauntingly, and it may be that some of the characters - for example the potato-loving Mersea parson, or the strange Mrs. de Witt - were based on observation of his neighbours and parishioners. However, much of the book seems to well up from uncontrolled and possibly uncontrollable internal impulses, whether in the portraits of the proud and defiant but in the end defeated Mehalah, and the sadistic and passionate Elijah Rebow who keeps a mad brother chained in a cellar beneath his house, or in the radical misogyny that leads the author to write "Generosity, pity, charity are unknown quantities in the feminine equation."
Requested here are historical novels written as such; the author understood himself or herself to be writing a novel set in an identifiable past time and a known place. To qualify as "historical," the novel should be set at least 100 years ago from our own time (not necessarily the author's time, provided the qualification just stated is kept in mind. (Please do not suggest science fiction and fantasy novels (time travel), such as by Connie Willis, etc.)
I'll take this opportunity to mention two more by Janet Lewis: The Wife of Martin Guerre and The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron (which isn't a ghost story), and seven novels by Sigrid Undset; the Kristin Lavransdatter Trilogy and the Olav Audunsson Quartet.
One of these days I mean to read Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes by Baring-Gould, set "at the close of the eighteenth century." There was a reprint a while ago with a foreword by John Fowles. To quote an internet source:
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924), was one of the most remarkable literary figures of his age. Theologian, hymn-writer, archaeologist, folk-song collector, poet, hagiologist, historian, antiquarian and novelist, he was responsible at one time for more books in the British Museum Library than any other author. Mehalah: a Story of the Salt Marshes (1880) was one of his first novels and created something of a sensation, being compared by Swinburne to Wuthering Heights: if it had not been followed by thirty others, distinctly inferior, Baring-Gould might well today enjoy a greater reputation than he does. Nevertheless, though nowadays largely forgotten, Mehalah remains an astonishing achievement: could this grim tale really have come from the pen of the man who wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the 16-volume Lives of the Saints? As rector of East Mersea from 1871 to 1881 Baring-Gould got to know well the marshland and riverscape that he describes so hauntingly, and it may be that some of the characters - for example the potato-loving Mersea parson, or the strange Mrs. de Witt - were based on observation of his neighbours and parishioners. However, much of the book seems to well up from uncontrolled and possibly uncontrollable internal impulses, whether in the portraits of the proud and defiant but in the end defeated Mehalah, and the sadistic and passionate Elijah Rebow who keeps a mad brother chained in a cellar beneath his house, or in the radical misogyny that leads the author to write "Generosity, pity, charity are unknown quantities in the feminine equation."
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Yes Walter Macken. I remember reading Seek The Fair Land many years ago and loving it.
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