I majored in History twice in college. Yes, one bachelor’s degree wasn’t enough, so I went back and got a second. In the pursuit of that second degree, I was blessed to take hands-down the best History class ever: Historiography. For those who don’t know, Historiography is the history of how history has been recorded. The more historical romance novels I write, the more important I realize the whole concept of historiography is to us. (more…)
Now I know you’ve felt like this before….
© Eastwest Imaging | Dreamstime.com
Friends, today I’d like to talk to you about something not related to history, but rather related to the experience we all have of writing romantic stories about history. It’s not about research or about debates of historical accuracy or how much we should strive for it. It’s not about marketing or strategies for getting our books out there. It’s not about working through revisions or about dealing with critiques or reviews. Yet at the same time, it’s about all of those things.
I’m talking about Author Envy. (more…)
The Courtship, Charles Green – 1878
You know me. I’m a History Apologist. Any time someone says “And that’s the way things were”, I have to ask “Was it really?” That’s especially true when it comes to the assumptions that are made about what people’s attitudes were, how they deported themselves, and what society’s rules were in the historical time periods in which we write.
So a couple of months ago when I was having a discussion with a fellow historical romance writer about why we write in the time periods that we do, hers being Regency and mine being Late Victorian, I was somewhat taken aback when her answer was “I prefer to write in the Regency because social rules were so restrictive and rigid in the Victorian era and men and women hardly had anything to do with each other”.
I bumped up against this assumption again recently when someone made the observation about my novel Fool for Love—set in 1896, mind you—that the heroine NEVER would have slept with the hero without being married to him (in spite of the fact that this particular heroine was already pregnant from a horrible previous relationship, was ridiculously grateful to the hero for saving her life, and was pretending she was married to him). But I suspect that person’s biggest problem was that the heroine really liked sex. How historically inaccurate!
Whoa. Hold on there, Nellie. You know what they say about ‘assume’: it makes an ass of u and me.
So naturally I dove into my treasure trove of historical books—bunches of which are social histories of the 19th century—and went to work. (more…)
C.W. Eckersberg – 1841
So a while back I read this great post by Nancy Goodman entitled “How ‘Real’ Do We Really Want Our Romance?”. In it she hits briefly on the topics of PTSD, rape, abuse, and the like popping up in more and more romance novels these days. She goes on to wonder how much authenticity we actually want in our accuracy. In the process she mentions that for some readers, the worst problem they feel comfortable with is that the heroine is a little plump.
Of course, that one tiny sentence in the post spun me off into a world of thinking about the realism of plump heroines. It dawned on me that our 21st century standard of body image and relative plumpness is not anywhere near what the standard definition has been for the past couple of millennia.
I wish I had the time to do master’s thesis level research on this one, but since I don’t, I’ll share with you what I know … and a bunch of pictures gleaned from Wikicommons. (more…)
I had this idea in my head that in my blog post this month I would pick a fight about how historically accurate we really need to be in our novels. After all, a few weeks ago I attended Angela James, Executive Director of Carina Press’s workshop “Before You Hit Send”, and she made the passing statement that absolute accuracy is not that important and a lot of things can slide if the story is good. I tend to agree with her. I think a lot of people tend to go straight off the deep-end mental about historical accuracy, thereby destroying a good story for themselves.
So as I thought about how best to tweak some noses, a new, odd thought hit me. What are we even talking about when we get wrapped up about this historical accuracy stuff? What does that term even mean?
The Afternoon Visitor, by Frederic Soulacroix
Settle down, ladies! There are social rules here!
To my mind, we’re talking about two entirely different things when we use the term “historical accuracy”. One I agree is essential to any historically-set novel. The other is subjective, fuzzy, and more often than not, people who think they know what they’re talking about haven’t a clue. (more…)
Lamia and the Soldier, by John William Waterhouse
Wikicommons
You’ve heard the old saying that History repeats itself, right? Of course you have. But it’s not just the events of History that have a way of resurfacing every now and then. People have a tendency to look back to an earlier age for inspiration on both an artistic and spiritual level. At the end of the 18th century and in the Regency the trend was to look back to the ancient world of Greece and Rome. But as the 19th century progressed, artists and scholars began to take another look at a period of time that many of their contemporaries had written off as dark, bleak, and unenlightened: the Middle Ages.
In fact, Medievalism became such a fad with so many off-shoots by the end of the 19th century, that we are still feeling the effects of the revival today. What started as a small movement amongst painters and poets, a reaction against the modernization of Realism, turned into an expansion of creativity that today’s fantasy and paranormal fans would recognize, in spirit and practice. (more…)
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