Earlier this week Candice Hern posted an article on Fog City Divas about Deal-Breakers between romance writers and romance readers. I can’t say that I disagree. Without historical details, accurate historical details, it’s hard to feel like you are part of a historical novel. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only reader out there who loves historicals and wants to see more written. 
I also have my degree in History, and to read these wonderful historical novels gives me a little thrill. And Ms. Hern is one of my favorite authors because of her research and love of history, which show through her novels.
I also have an understanding that these are writers, not historians, and thus when they don’t get everything right, it is understandable. I’m not saying that doing things out of character for a time period are right or not paying attention to details won’t matter. If an author writes a good enough story, yes, historical accuracy can slide.
But please, please, don’t equate bad research with a bad novel. Don’t say that just because the history is off, or someone is fast and loose with details that the book is not worth reading. A novel could be historically accurate, but have weak characterization and poor plot points.
I know that I am not only a newbie to romance blogland, I am a near infant into this world. It upsets me though, that someone decides to rant about something such as history when a historian is something they are far from. Please remember that most of the history we have before about 1800 or so is based on upper class bias and ideals, because they were the most educated, the most literate, and had the money to distribute what they wanted. What we have after is still biased in some way shape or form. What has survived has a spin on it. All history is biased somehow, and if you look at any school standards for any history or social studies class, one skill as student is supposed to learn is to tell bias in primary and secondary sources.
And please, PLEASE also don’t say that the study of history has only come about since 1900. Don’t forget about the humanists, who pushed history education on the masses in the RENAISSANCE. All of the history disciplines, urban, social, economic, military, and cultural to name a few, have been studied IN DEPTH since a little something called The Histories by Herodotus. And we should not forget about Thucyidies, Cicero, Livy, and the Venerable Bede all writing histories of various disciplines before 900.
This argument has a legitimate beef with readers who want some sort of accuracy in what they read. However, I’ve seen such a great decline of base knowledge of history in this country that when readers don’t catch historical inaccuracies it’s really not their fault. It’s the fault of a society that sees only the glory of recent history and not the benefits of seeing the past as something to learn from and not idealize. As a historian (though I’m the first to admit, I’m nowhere near the great ones) we should be happy there is the interest there is in reading about the past, even if it is in somewhat inaccurate romance novels.
I agree that the more historical accuracy, the better. But I don’t think that readers should feel bad for not spotting the historical inaccuracies or *gasp* even liking books that have historical inaccuracies.
It isn’t our job as the reader to be the historical fact checker and demand that we want more historically accurate books or else. I’ll take a crappily researched historical novel with a great love story over a really well researched on and a crappy love story where I wish at the end the hero would be strangled by his valet and the heroine drowning in the Thames.
I also think certain authors’ comments on their own superior historical knowledge suggests a certain amount of disdain for those readers who just don’t understand the importance of requiring historical accuracy.
First I have to say LOVE THE NEW LOOK!!
I’ve always thought the secret to good historicals is to be accurate when including details. Wallpaper historicals are fine, they give you the feeling of the period without a lot of detail. But if an author goes out of their way to include something and then makes a mistake it can be glaring. And for some reader this is going to drag them out of the story, no matter how good.
As a reader, I like to be pulled into the period I’m reading. Give me enough details, include sight, sound, touch, smell and let me be there with you. However, I would not stop reading a book if I spotted an historical accuracy. It’s about the story, not about whether or not the color ecru was used in lace during the 1820s. A good book is a good book.
>Please remember that most of the history we have before about 1800 or so is based on upper class bias and ideals, because they were the most educated, the most literate, and had the money to distribute what they wanted. What we have after is still biased in some way shape or form. What has survived has a spin on it. All history is biased somehow, and if you look at any school standards for any history or social studies class, one skill as student is supposed to learn is to tell bias in primary and secondary sources.
This isn’t true in the least. “Social history” is NOT the history written down by upper class people. It is NOT recorded by the elite at all, at least not until the late 1800s, beginning with the muckraking movements. It is compiled from enormous amounts of data about ORDINARY people–their marriage patterns, birth and death patterns, movements and migrations, their beliefs as revealed by the “common” records they left behind. From the late 1500s onward, we have HUGE amounts of this information for England, for example. Historians didn’t know what to DO with it to get real information out of it–they didn’t think that there was any information that mattered–until the 20th century. You’re assuming that what modern historians use to learn about the past is primarily official histories and the like. This hasn’t been true for at least half a century. In fact, we understand better the economic forces of the middle ages and the Rennaisance than the people writing the histories of the age did! They had no idea of how economic systems worked, and despite the fact that the records that were taken COULD have told a knowledgable person what was going on, no one of that age had the kind of approach to their world that could have allowed them to really understand things like population pressures and unemployment. All they say were the results.
Please, do read The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class. Or Henry Mayhew’s articles. These are for the 1800s, of course, but there is plenty of material about the social history and lives of the common people even in the middle ages–try Growing Up in Mideaval London and Life in a Medieval Village (or Town) for “lite” reads. There’s also The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, which is simply MAGNIFICENT, very readable, and quite short. Read anything–everything!–by Ferdinand Bruadel. I have found him quite reliable and enormously insightful with huge amounts of raw data in all of his works to back up his statements–in high school, I read his three-volume Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800, twice, cover to cover. Truly the father of modern social historians. (I have also found compilations of wills, inventories, wages, rents, and grain yields across centuries very useful, but most people think they’re boring! Studying trascriptions of primary records is a great way of seeing if a modern historian is off the wall or not, though.)
You also state that the study of history is biased and try to make the connection to a “you never can know!” attitude because of the inevitability of bias. That doesn’t work. EVERYTHING is biased. EVERYONE is biased. If I write a story about a small town in the present day, my portrayal is biased whether I show it as a charming, folksy place or an insular, vicious place. No matter what my portrayal is, it’s biased because of my emotional reactions to small towns, and either portrayal could work. That doesn’t mean that I can plop down a five-story Neiman Marcus on the corner of this 1,000-person town and expect no readers to protest. There is bias, but a writer can still be wrong. Disagreement on some issues doesn’t mean that “anything goes”. It doesn’t mean, either, that most reputable historians have huge axes to grind. Some do, but their theories are, fortunately, generally swifty consigned to the dustbin of history once popular culture moes beyond the fads that produced them.
I have never, ever said that readers who don’t notice historical mistakes are stupid or inferior. I have criticized AUTHORS for claiming to that they have done as much research as anyone ought to expect from authors of historical romances because they are “just romance.” If you want to write RomanceLand historicals, that’s fine by me. My single objection throughout has been writers who throw a whitewash of history on their books and then claim they’re as historical as any romance should be because, you know, anything is else just a boring old lecture. (Or, conversely, that you “Never can know!”) My position is–and has always been–honesty about writing. Some RomanceLand authors create really fabulously fun and complex worlds. It’s the ones who are pretending to be “real historicals” and not actually exerting the effort who write the “thin” books.
This is an interesting post. I remember years ago, when I was researching the Regency for my own books, reading a Catherine Coulter in which she got the date wrong for Edmund Kean’s debut on the London stage. Did it make a difference to the book? No, but it made one to me. But only because I knew the correct date. I also remember a Jude Devereux book in which she had an opera appear a year or two earlier than it actually did, just because she wanted to use it in her book. I wouldn’t have known any different, but she included an author’s note saying how she took liberties.
I’ve always tried to present a good historical background to my books. I double and triple check facts I want to use. I’ve read diaries and accounts and books of slang, dress and conduct because I want that history to feel real. That said, I’ve had readers say the things that happened in my books couldn’t have happened because of history and social constraints of the time, yet I had documented accounts of just such a thing happening. Sometimes, you’re just screwed.
But I don’t mind admitting to you that the most important factor of any book to me are the characters. I’m more concerned with telling a good story than making sure all my historical is totally correct. Does that make me a bad author? I’m sure there are people out there who would say I don’t manage write even a decent story and that my research sucks and that’s okay. I’m writing a story and if I need to take liberties to tell it, I will.
Because regardless of your research, your reader shouldn’t notice it. That’s my opinion, agree or disagree if you will. First and foremost the reader of a historical romance is there for the romance first and the history second. The history should compliment your story, embrace it and make it real, but it should never take the reader’s attention away from the world you’ve built and the people in it. Does that make sense?
Anyway, I’m not arguing that historical accuracy isn’t important, lord no. I’m just not going to hang my ability as a writer on it. I’m not a historian, I’m a writer and my research generally keeps to those things that interest me. I want to know that the author I’m reading had done enough research to build a world and make it real to me, I don’t need any discourses or full on descriptions of corn laws or luddites. 🙂
I think Kathyrn summed up the whole point very nicely at the end of her comment. Thank you. 🙂
And to think it only took me 5 paragraphs to get to that point, Lawson! lol.
Te he he. We should all be so well spoken.
To me, an author does the research necessary for the story, and necessary to write a good story, with good characters in the historical setting. If you’re doing that extra research, why aren’t you writing your dissertation on the social history of Mideval England? If you have such great sources you should be doing two things at once, pleasing the romance readers as well as becoming the historian that you wish to be.
And you can ask any professor of history in any time period and discipline and they will tell you this: yes, there are mountains of records about birth rates, death rates, movement and migration, diaries, letters, pamphlets to conduct excellent research. Ultimatly it is up to interpretation because all work is based on one person’s account and not anyone else’s.
“You can never know” truly because you weren’t there! If you had been there what you write would be different and what you percieve is different that someone else who had the same experience. History, like works of fiction, are subject to interpretation, and no one is right or perfect and can’t please everyone all the time. Poetic liscence must be taken into account with romance novels. They are love stories first, historical second.
***History was written by those who hanged heroes . . .*** Nothing could be more true. :-/
Kathryn and Lydia’s points are valid, but I must come down heavier on Lydia’s side. There was a time in my writing career where I was ready to give up on my historicals due to hearing that line(in various forms) from editors, readers, other writers: “it’s only a romance novel”. I believe that history impacts the way my characters not only interact with their world, but how my h/h fall in love with each other. The Regency miss wouldn’t be able to go off alone with a man the way my Edwardian miss is able to go bicycling with her beau or male friend, just as a Medieval soldier would deal with war much differently than his Peninsular War counterpart.
What I find ironic is if history has little to medium relevancy to historical romances, why aren’t authors able to run the gamut of history? If wallpaper Regencies are the norm, why not wallpaper historicals set in Ancient China?
Camille, I just want to say that I have never thought that history didn’t matter. Not sure if that’s what you got from my post, but I feel I need to back myself up a bit. I do pay attention to history — especially how the time would affect my characters. Social behavior can affect so much, and to me that’s very important. If you’re not going to give history its due then you might as well write contemporaries. What I meant with my post is that I don’t allow the history to overshadow the plot. Story comes first — that’s why my readers buy me. 🙂