What are some really good historicals you’ve read? Alltime favorites and new ones alike.
The historical book discussion is doing so well…recommend your favorites…
by CJ | Aug 16, 2010 | Journal | 123 comments
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Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series. These are set in the early 1830’s New Orleans.
The Marcus Didius Falco novels by Lindsey Davis. (Rome, 70 AD is where they begin.)
There are a bunch of books written for the YA market that I like, and I can’t remember the titles at the moment.
Robert Silverberg, Gilgamesh the King. Not exactly historical but brilliant.
One of the best: Mary Renault’s *The King Must Die.* Quite accurate, re the era: story of Theseus told as a historical.
oh, Mary Renault, wonderful! – takes me back, discovered them in my early teens – and Robert Graves, particularly the Claudius books and Wife to Mr Milton – and Rosemary Sutcliffe when I was a little younger – the Silver Branch – about a young military surgeon in a Roman Britain split between the upstart Carausius and the rest of the empire – Christians and the lost Eagle of the Ninth in the mix. and the most wonderful illustrations by Charles Keeping.
What is a “historical”? I’m a bit insane, I know, but I greatly enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon + the Baroque Cycle. On multiple rereads. Even though I differ A LOT with him in general views.
A historical is a book that is set in prior centuries, ideally with a strong emphasis on historical accuracy. There is also historical adventure, historical romance, etc, with historical accuracy diluted by another emphasis.
Let’s say that you can actually pass a history exam on items you learned from good historical novels, but you should not trust a historical romance.
I know, it was more of a rhetorical question 😉
The thing with Stephenson’s books as above is that the much more of the historical stuff than most people expect checks out, while the present time storylines are just… storylines.
One of my favorites that crosses genres into historical mystery is the Brother Cadfael stories, set in the wars between Stephen and Matilda, around Shrewsbury. These were also a PBS offering, with Derek Jacobi in the lead role. From Wikipedia: “Brother Cadfael is the fictional main character in a series of historical murder mysteries written by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name “Ellis Peters”. The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey, in western England, in the first half of the 12th century.”
Other good ones: “I, Claudius,” by Robert Graves, and by the same author: “My Shipmate Hercules.”
I actually was strongly tempted to quote Georgette Heyer in my PhD thesis re. the way she helps one understand the concerns of elite landholders in Britain as regards marriage and inheritance. I didn’t but did sneak in a intro quote from Stevenson’s Kidnapped, since the thesis was on 17th C. social structure in Argyllshire, Scotland. Stevenson remains a great read, by the way!
Here are 3 entertaining non-fiction historical books that I’ve really enjoyed.
The Reckoning By Charles Nicholl
Was Christopher Marlowe murdered? No conspiracy theories, just a vivid, brilliant, highly readable, true-crime thriller taking advantage of recent Marlowe scholarship. It really brings to life the murky and turgid world of Elizabethan spies and con men, with ample quotes from original documents. (Conclusions: Yes, we now know for certain that Marlowe worked as a government spy/informer. Yes, it seems highly likely that he was murdered. No, we don’t know why, or who ordered it, and we probably never will.)
http://www.amazon.com/Reckoning-Murder-Christopher-Marlowe/dp/0226580245/
Pompeii (UK) alias Fires of Vesuvius (US) by Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge University
If you take a look at Mary Beard’s entertaining blog, you’ll get an idea of what she’s like.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/
This book beats everything else I’ve ever read about Pompeii, because of its down-to-earth scepticism, and masses of interesting facts. She gives a real sense of everyday life in the the ancient town without resorting to fantasy, and explodes many myths in the process. A review quoted on the back cover says, “A vivid demonstration that sceptical scholarship can provide as gripping a read as sensationalism.” True!
http://www.amazon.com/Fires-Vesuvius-Pompeii-Lost-Found/dp/0674045866/
Introduction to Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
Rob Roy is a great historical novel – but Scott’s 150 page introduction giving the non-fiction history of the MacGregors, Rob Roy, and Rob Roy’s sons, is well worth reading on its own, quite apart from the novel itself. Scott tells one entertaining anecdote after another, including several stories he heard in his youth from old people who had met Rob Roy personally, and other eyewitness accounts … and Scott really knew how to tell a good story. His account of Rob Roy is by no means entirely flattering, and he gives a strong sense of a real person with plenty of faults as well as virtues.
Available free from Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7025
May I add another sub-genre of historical: from Wikipedia: “Horatio Hornblower is a fictional Royal Navy officer who is the protagonist of a series of novels by C. S. Forester, and later the subject of films and television programs.
The original Hornblower tales began with the appearance of a junior Royal Navy Captain on independent duty on a secret mission to Central America, though later stories would fill out his earlier years, starting with an unpromising beginning as a seasick midshipman.”
And (same source) : “Richard Sharpe is the central character in Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series of historical fiction stories.” [Napoleonic Wars, viewpoint of a rifleman.]
And right along with Forester, same source: “Patrick O’Brian, CBE (12 December 1914 – 2 January 2000), born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen Maturin. The 20-novel series is known for its well-researched and highly detailed portrayal of early 19th century life, as well as its authentic and evocative language. A partially-finished twenty-first novel in the series was published posthumously containing facing pages of handwriting and typescript.”
😀 Where have I heard that list before?
I loved World Without End and Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.
CS Forester’s Hornblower series was probably one of my first exposure to historical fiction, my father read them out loud to me. In graduate school, (getting my doctorate in history!) I fell in love with the Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael series, and my decision to write my own historical mystery was solidified.
My own area of research is 19th century, so the Anne Perry mystery series (both Inspector Pitt and Monk) also became favorites, as has Hambly’s New Orleans books. In fact, I just began rereading that series (As many of you, I started out on her SF, then discovered the historical mysteries. I always felt that there were strong similarities in being able to recreate a past world and creating a future world.
I have noticed in the sub-genre of historical mysteries, there has recently been a lot of interest in World War One-and immediate post war era (which has suddenly become historical as that generation dies out.) Again, Anne Perry has mined that era, as has Jacqueline Winspere’s Maisie Dobbs series.
What I don’t tend to like in historicals is when real famous people become the main characters (or even minor characters). For example, Susan B. Anthony and Teddy Roosevelt show up in some historical mysteries. I guess it is the professional historian in me, but I spend too much time arguing with the author in my head over whether or not the real person would have ever said what the fictional character said. I don’t tend to get as upset if the book is set far enough in the past that no one really knows what anyone would have said. What do others feel about historical fiction about real people?
I think Patrick O’brian so much fuller and more interesting than Hornblower … yes, another great series to come back to … I have Cherryh, O’Brian, who else ……? to re-read, and re-read, LOL!
I’d recommend The Edge on the Sword by Rebecca Tingle. It’s about the early life of the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great. (Intended for the YA market, but readable by adults too.)
There are a lot of historical fantasy novels that pay great attention to their time periods that I’m restraining myself from listing, with difficulty. I haven’t read too many straight historical novels.
(Incidentally, Alfred’s eldest daughter was named Æthelflæd, in case anyone wants to look her up. Sorry, meant to put that in my first post.)
Comment about Cadfael: William the Conqueror conducted a holocaust against the Northern English population–the Harrying of the North. That’s the reason the North isn’t listed in the Domesday Book. It had not recovered to any significant degree by the wars of Stephen and Matilda.
A lot of the early Anglo-Saxon nobility turns up in bloodlines in Northumbria and Scotland after 1066 (Norman invasion at Hastings in the south)—seems to have been a fallback position after Hastings: William the Conqueror takes firm control of the south and the previous administration consequently heads north to friendly houses, to be back and forth across the Northumbrian and Scottish border—if there was any firm distinction of that border in those days…at least that’s the impression I get.
Don’t forget Captain Frederick Marryat!
It took me some digging to figure out the Stephen and Matilda thing—I learned Henrys and Edwards and Williamses aplenty in the American school system, but there’s a whole slice of history and a very important one in that fallout, in which it’s really useful to have read from the Merovingians upward, including the Carolingians—and then it really starts to make a much larger pattern.
And if anybody has utterly missed these books—you have a world as complex, full of derring-do and mischief as The Lord of the Rings awaiting you.
I’m going to show my morbid streak here — Simon Winchester has written several factual accounts of great disasters. The two I remember are about Krakatoa and the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 (Isaac’s Storm). What makes them interesting is the interweaving of personal accounts into the narrative, things leading up to the deadly event, personality conflicts, etc. Winchester also wrote about the engineer who, while trying to map out canals across England, became the father of modern geology by inventing the theory of stratification (The Map that Changed the World). Another one along the same line is Storm of the Century, about the relatively unknown hurricane that tore across the Florida Keys in 1935. It was small but incredibly destructive, sparked a Washington investigation into the treatment of war veterans, spawned the NOAA, and effectively killed the railroad system that ran down into the Keys at the time (another fascinating story!) I remember a PBS special that showed the aftermath of that hurricane; an entire train with the exception of the locomotive was flipped off the tracks on Islamorada and the tracks themselves were shoved to the side.
For YA readers, I suggest the series Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyers, the first one being by that title. Jacky Faber is a young gutter rat in Napoleonic London. Rather than starve, she sneaks aboard a sloop of war and enlists as a cabin boy. She is able to keep up the facade for the first 2 books, then gets ‘outed’… the series takes liberties with history, but not excessively so, and is a good read.
Oops, I should say the Storm of the Century was written by Willie Drye, not Simon Winchester.
Yes to Brother Cadfael! As a young teen, Rosemary Sutcliff’s books about Roman Britain were some of my favourites: The eagle of the Ninth, The silver branch and The lantern bearers; I liked those better than The High deeds of Finn MacCool (sp?). Also Rudyard Kipling: Puck of Pook’s Hill, Farewell rewards and fairies, Kim, Stalky and co.(if that account of public school life can be considered historical as well – it was definitely different from my time&life). I think Sutcliff inspired me to choose Margueritte Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien for my French reading list: I liked it, it wasn’t nearly as gloomy as most of the official French literature we were recommended to read. I just found out it’s translated into English as well: it’s her fictional take on the memoirs of Hadrien (of Hadrien’s Wall fame), based on several historical sources but apparently not always accurate.
And do you count Georgette Heyer’s historical romances? The stories are entirely fictional, but the descriptions of the 18th century upperclass environment are supposed to be very accurate (I’m no scholar). The same probably goes for Mary Stewart’s Crystal cave, Hollow hills, and Last enchantment trilogy about Merlin and king Arthur, but I did enjoy those stories.
And a different era of history: Nevil Shute’s books about the early years of flying, when transatlantic crossings weren’t routine yet, and about flying in the RAF during WOII; they also paint a picture of what life was like for ordinary people at the time. Stephen Morris, Trustee from the toolroom, Checkerboard, Pied Piper, A town like Alice, An old captivity and No Highway are titles I remember. And in the same period: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Vol de nuit (Night flight?) is a personal memory of flying at night when flying was young, and there were no radar beacons everywhere.
And a bit closer to home: Give Terry a bone, by Babes van Dillen Clinton, about WOII in Nazi-occupied Holland: a true story, quietly told, of one ordinary person’s life at the time: it doesn’t dig too deeply into the worst horrors, but it resonated with some of the stories my mother and grandparents sometimes (reluctantly) told, and those details (like never having seen, let alone tasted an egg till she was nearly 8) helped make some unbelievable things real, showing the impact of abstract things we learned about in school on real ordinary people going about their everyday lives.
When I taught history (as I did) I tried to give people an impression of how average people lived day to do in various times, what their day’s routine was, what they ate, what they saw, how they set up their social life. The dates—learn a few really signpost dates—but I believe if you understand the people, you’ll understand the situation, and if you understand the situation, you’ll understand the government a lot better. And if you understand several governments of a given era, and how they interacted, you have a lot better picture of the ancient world than you’ll ever get from memorizing a long string of dates. The dates fit you for quiz shows and trivia contests, but the people-knowledge means you get wiser, in my opinion.
And that’s the value of good historical novels: they teach you about the people and the texture of their lives, ergo the issues of the time, ergo the times they lived through.
Hey, that sunny smiley was supposed to be an 8 and a ) !
And I didn’t mention the Dutch YA writer Thea Beckman, who lives in our home town and wrote ‘Crusade in jeans’ and a lot more books about Dutch history, and a trilogy about the 100 years war between England and France following the story of Bertrand du Guésclin (1320-1380), but I don’t think most of them have been translated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_du_Guesclin
We just got through watching The First Churchills, a BBC series, one of the first of that ilk, and were quite fascinated by the portrayal of William of Orange, and the details that filtered into the story about the Dutch conflict. My maternal grandfather’s family came into New Amsterdam (New York) and I never was quite clear how New York (along with my 4th and 5th great-grandfathers) ended up in English hands. By what I gather it must have been the peace treaty from that war, and there was some tradeoff of giving New York to the British and preserving Dutch rights in the Dutch East India Corporation’s areas of operation…something like that.
But it was a very interesting series.