List and discuss works of historical fiction that are sufficiently annotated so that the reader can compare the fictional part to existing historical consensus.
The only example of this approach that I know of is Red Plenty, a set of short stories about the Soviet Union that ends with 53 pages of notes discussing historical accounts behind the author’s invention. I enjoyed it.
Sometimes original source documents are available with copious footnotes. There are lots of annotated editions of Shakespeare. Oxford has published a number of annotated editions of the Bible. There are a number of collections of primary source documents from various periods of time.
Do historians ever write scholarly articles discussing the veracity of various works of historical fiction in a non-superficial manner? Are there collected editions of such essays? I imagine that there is plenty of literary criticism directed at historical fiction written with a literary perspective, rather than that of a professional historian.
Thanks. I see that it received mixed reviews. It’s an alternative-history fantasy where Paris is still occupied by Nazis in 1950 and surrealists join forces with French partisans. Blurb about author:
A British “fantastic fiction” writer. He is fond of describing his work as “weird fiction” (after early 20th century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird who consciously attempt to move fantasy away from commercial, genre clichés of Tolkien epigons. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party. He has stood for the House of Commons for the Socialist Alliance, and published a book on Marxism and international law.
Not quite what I had in mind, but I appreciate the mention. The world is vast.
I can recommend the Flashman books by George Macdonald Frasier, starting with the eponymous volume. Flashman is a Victorian adventurer, a coward, a womanizer, a bully, and generally a dick to everyone around him, but who winds up with incredible honors from appearing taking creditable part in every ridiculous disaster that Victorian Britain could boast of. Any time a British army was wiped out to the last man, Flashman was that last man, sobbing and running for cover.
The disasters Flashman participates in were real, and the books are carefully annotated to identify the real people that Flashman interacts with. The charm of the books is in the honesty of Flashman’s voice–the books purport to be his memoirs.
Bonus question: has an accredited historian ever provided a long treatment of works by E. L. Doctorow, James Albert Michener or other high-profile writers of historical fiction? It’s one thing for the author to provide (much appreciated) explanatory notes. It would be another for a professional historian to discuss the work’s veracity.
It’s worth noting that veracity isn’t the only criteria or necessarily the best criteria for judging a work of historical fiction. It’s still interesting though.
Honestly, annotation or an afterward written by a professional historian would probably fix all of EL Doctorow’s alleged problems. High resolution realism and entertainment will always be at loggerheads, IMHO. (Counter-examples welcome!)
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. - Hitchcock
Simon Sebag Monefiore’s novel Sashenka doesn’t come with footnotes nor an appendix, but I would recommend his earlier non-fiction books on Stalin before opening the cover. Approximately 70% a better read if undertaken after Court of the Red Tsar.
There exists The Journal of Historical Fictions. It is open source; the last issue was published in 2022. Their Twitter-X account has 186 followers. It does not appear to be focused on historical veracity, quite the opposite:
Narrative constructions of the past constitute a powerful discursive system for the production of cognitive and ideological representations of identity, agency, and social function, and for the negotiation of conceptual relationships between societies in different times and lived experience. The licences of fiction, especially in mass culture, define a space in which the pursuit of narrative and meaning is permitted to slip the chains of sanctioned historical truths to explore the deep desires and dreams that lie beneath all constructions of the past.
I accept their efforts, though I might point out that, “The chains of sanctioned historical truths”, have never been especially binding in Hollywood or on Publisher’s Row.
Possibly on the margins of the OP’s scope, the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels of Patrick O’Brian - set in the naval sphere of the Napoleonic Wars - has spawned a series of works by others discussing food, language, the actual Royal Navy at the time [the ones I know - there may be others].
O’Brian himself only had brief comments on the historicity of the novel, and mainly to highlight and excuse historical inaccuracies.
In the same vein, there are societies dedicated to 19th-20th century authors like Twain, Dickens, Conan Doyle and Austen, whose journals and newsletters are full of discussion about the historical settings in the novels.
I really like the The Annotated [Whatever] series of books, and own quite a few of them (The Annotated Alice, with annotations by Martin Gardner (and later, by others), The Annotated Gulliver’s Travels (Isaac Asimov), The Annotated Frankenstein (Leonard Wolf, Leslie Klinger), etc.) But, now that I think back on them, I don’t think any were historical fiction. A lot of such annotated works about long-ago historical periods were actually written in those periods. (The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, etc.)
Patrick O’Brien was mentioned above – in a similar vein, Cecil Scott Forester wrote The Hornblower Companion that gives notes about his books, most notably in the form of maps, which I found very helpful.
I prepared very full set of annotations for my YA time travel novel The Traveler, explaining obscure things, giving images, and substantiating the accuracy of the items referred to, in case anyone was curious. But no one ever was, so it remains undistributed.
