Novel History

In 2001 Mark C. Carnes published a book entitled Novel History. Twenty historians responded to the questions: “How accurately do historical novels reflect the past? What is the relation between our “real” history and our “finest imaginative renderings of it?”Each historian wrote an essay on one best-selling historical novel including such classics as Libra by Don DeLillo, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier and sixteen others. In general, the historians analyzed the facts used by the novelists and critiqued their work accordingly. The novelists claimed the right to modify the facts and create new ones to suit their story.

Conflict between novelists and historians is not a new phenomenon. Many historians see nothing of historical significance beyond entertainment in works of fiction whether they are in a well-researched and compelling context or not. The founder of the Historical Novel Society, Richard Lee, in an address to the Romantic Novelists’ Association (2000), suggested that “history is not the objective truth it claims to be . . . each decade gives entirely new weight to the facts they do agree on.”  To prove his argument he cites the following areas that have been fundamentally reinterpreted in just the last few years:

1.       “Anything to do with Colonial History and Imperialism”

2.        ”Anything to do with Women”

3.        ”Anything to do with yesterday’s heroes”

He argues that historians “give too much credence to what I’ll call, for the sake of argument, FACTS.”

This fight needs to begin with defining the competing epistemologies-ie. What is the nature of truth? How do we know what we know? How much should we use our imaginations in reconstructing the past? I will write about foundational epistemology another time, or give way to someone else who would like to engage the question. But I do want to suggest that some historical novels do humanize the characters of the past whose elusive lives and missing stories tend to cast them in marble. In some cases, inventing a character and telling the story of an historical period through his eyes helps us “revivify” the past and perhaps give insight into the humanness of ancestors.

Some of the best examples of history teaching through the story of fictional characters are found in the works of Victorian historian and novelist George Alfred Henty. He, Rudyard Kipling, R.M. Ballantyne and others of the 19th century taught history through adventure writing. Of course he penned his stories with the biases of his class, country, and era, sometimes labeled “romanticism.” But he brought excitement to reading about the past, and some of the boys who read Henty went on to become historians in their own right-Winston Churchill, A.J.P. Taylor, and Arthur Schlesinger  to name just a few. Of course Henty is vilified today because he promoted manliness, courage, self-reliance, respect for women and, worst of all, English patriotism and the superiority of Western Christian civilization. Such writing is labeled by the literary cognoscenti as Victorian moralism and considered, prima facie, illegitimate today. Not in our corner of Georgia though.

Henty himself was a war veteran and news- correspondent whose personal experiences are woven throughout his historical novels. One of the great advantages of that type of literature is its ability to teach moral lessons and comment on the meaning of life and the reality of sin, redemption and hope.  Fiction and historical writing both have their limits. Searching out the facts and bringing meaning to people and events is a craft sometimes best expressed in one form or the other but sometimes in the combination, novel history.

Bill Potter