Historical Novels Quotes

• I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.

  Peter Carey

  Book, Past, Curiosity

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• Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

  Lion Feuchtwanger

  Writing, Asking, Answers

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• I can see myself wanting to write a historical novel - you don't need to worry about references to reality TV or pop music, you can just get on with the basics of story and character.

  Irvine Welsh

  Writing, Character, Reality

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

  Lion Feuchtwanger

  Venture, Modern, States

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• Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.

  Sara Sheridan

  Girl, Writing, Character

  "Historic Edinburgh fashion at the City Art Centre" by Sara Sheridan, www.theguardian.com. May 5, 2011.

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• The Dream Lover is a historical novel at once expansively researched yet intimately imagined. George Sand may be the ultimate Berg heroine. 'A life not lived in truth,' Berg writes, 'is a life forfeited.' In this latest work, Elizabeth Berg has poured her own great gifts and her own great heart into the story of a woman determined to refuse any such forfeiture, no matter the cost.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Dream, Writing, Heart

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• The historical novel gives us perspective on our modern lives and helps us connect with the story, which we are continuing ourselves.

  Mary Pope Osborne

  Giving, Perspective, Modern Life

  Source: www.yabookshelf.com

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• Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.

  Martha Grimes

  Details, London, Spheres

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• My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if the material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.

  George Santayana

  Character, Past, Careers

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.62, Indiana University Press

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• There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Powerful, Fiction, Stories

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.

  Hilary Mantel

  Writing, Thinking, Careers

  "Hilary Mantel, In Brief". Interview with Seymour Glass, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 30, 2014.

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• When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."

  Nicholas Meyer

  War, Gone, Research

  Source: collider.com

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• My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Writing, Romance

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• I loved reading historical novels when I was young, but I definitely don't think I wrote one. When I read my book through, when it was completely done and in printed galleys, I was surprised by how uninterested in the passage of time and history the book seemed to be. Even though you can feel it all there, that's just not what it's focused on.

  Danielle Dutton

  Reading, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I'm not entirely sure what a historical novel absolutely has to be, but you don't want a reader who loves a very traditional historical novel to go in with the expectation that this is going to deliver the same kind of reading experience. I think what's contemporary about my book has something to do with how condensed things are.

  Danielle Dutton

  Reading, Book, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• With a historical novel you know that liberties are being taken. Since Walter Scott, we know that poetic license, dramatic license, that events been conflated and that liberties have been taken, characters ditto, dates rearranged. But people don't seem to understand that movies are fictions, they are dramatizations, at least historical movies, and we should accord the moviemakers some of the same understanding and latitude. When you go to a movie you know it's a dramatization and not history.

  Nicholas Meyer

  Taken, Character, Poetic License

  Source: collider.com

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• I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

  Jami Attenberg

  Writing, Emotional, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Writing, Thinking, Differences

  Source: therumpus.net

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• As far as benefits to reading historical novels, there are several! For one thing, you learn about life in another era. Secondly, these novels help us to develop a deeper understanding of the legacy of women who came before us and the strides made by our ancestors.

  Mary Pope Osborne

  Reading, Understanding, Benefits

  Source: www.yabookshelf.com

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• I have rarely read a more wonderful book than To Win Her Favor by Tamera Alexander. Rich with historical detail and fully developed characters, this novel held me spellbound until the last page. If you read one historical novel this year, make it To Win Her Favor. It will linger with you long after the last page.

  Colleen Coble

  Book, Character, Winning

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• [My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Feet, Eight, Hands

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• It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Captivity, Pages

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• Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history’s illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.

  Lauren Willig

  Cousin, Reality, Class

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• Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

  Louis L'Amour

  Teaching, Desire, Events

  Louis L'Amour (2008). “Education of a Wandering Man”, p.15, Bantam

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• If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.

  Louis L'Amour

  Book, Writing, Past

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