Historical Novel

Historical fiction

Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past.

An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the period depicted. Authors also frequently choose to explore notable historical figures in these settings, allowing readers to better understand how these individuals might have responded to their environments. Some subgenres such as alternate history and historical fantasy insert speculative or a historical elements into a novel.

Works of historical fiction are sometimes criticized for lack of authenticity because of readerly or genre expectations for accurate period details.

Its foundations in the early 19th century is seen in the works of Sir Walter Scott and his contemporaries such as the Frenchman Honoré de Balzac, the American James Fenimore Cooper, and Russian, Leo Tolstoy. However, the blending of "historical" and "fiction" in individual works of literature has a long tradition in most cultures; both western traditions as well as Eastern, in the form of oral and folk traditions which produced epics, novels, plays and other fictional works describing history for contemporary audiences.

Definitions differ as on one hand the Historical Novel Society defines the genre as works "written at least fifty years after the events described" and on the other hand Lynda Adamson, states that the historical novel is a novel “about a time period at least 25 years before it was written.

Historical fiction sometimes encouraged movements of romantic nationalism examples Scott's Waverley novels created interest in Scottish history, series of novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski on the history of Poland Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote several immensely popular novels set in conflicts between the Poles and predatory in his book The Knights of the cross for which he won the Nobel Prize in literature in the year 1905.

Many early historical novels played an important role in the rise of European popular interest in the history of the Middle Ages. Example Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame often receives credit for fueling the movement to preserve the Gothic architecture of France, leading to the establishment of the Monuments historiques, the French governmental authority for historic preservation

In some historical novels, major historic events take place mostly off-stage, while the fictional characters inhabit the world where those events occur. Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped recounts mostly private adventures set against the backdrop of the Jacobite troubles in Scotland. Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge is set amid the Gordon Riots, and A Tale of Two Cities in the French Revolution. In some works, the accuracy of the historical elements has been questioned, as in Alexandre Dumas' Queen Margot. Postmodern novelists such as John Barth and Thomas Pynchon where they mix the historical characters and settings with invented history and fantasy, as in the novels 

History up to 18th century

One of the earliest examples of the historical novel in Europe is La Princesse de Clèves, a French novel written by  Madame de La Fayette which was published in March 1678. It is regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel, and as a great classic work.

19th century

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, 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 said to be Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent.

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 which is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars.

In the United States, James Fenimore Cooper was a prominent author of historical novels who was influenced by Scott.^[22] His most famous novel is The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757

In French literature, the most prominent inheritor of Scott's style of the historical novel was Balzac. In 1829 Balzac published Les Chouans,

Tolstoy's War and Peace offers an example of 19th-century historical fiction.