The Historical Novel

In the second edition of The Historical Novel , Jerome de Groot expertly charts the evolution of one of literature’s most beloved and complex forms. From its eighteenth-century origins to postmodern and contemporary historical fiction, de Groot reveals how historical fiction continues to challenge, provoke, and transform our understanding of the past. The second edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded with global perspectives and new emphasis on the role and importance of female writers throughout. Readers will discover fresh insights on: different genres, such as sensational or ‘low’ fiction, crime novels, literary works, counterfactual writing and related issues of audience, value, and authenticity; the many functions of historical fiction, particularly the challenges it poses to accepted histories and postmodern questioning of ‘grand narratives’; the relationship of the historical novel to the wider cultural sphere with reference to historical theory, the internet, television, and film; key theoretical concepts such as the authentic fallacy, postcolonialism, Marxism, Neo-Victorian approaches, critical race theory, queer and feminist reading; works which diversify our understanding of the form and reflect an increasing sense that the writer should be understood as intervening in historical debates—including the work of Hilary Mantel, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Townsend Warner, W. G. Sebald, Chinua Achebe, Sarah Waters, Amitav Ghosh, George Eliot, and Leo Tolstoy. Drawing on a wide range of examples from across the centuries and around the globe, the second edition of The Historical Novel is essential reading for exploring the rich intersection where history meets fiction—a creative borderland where the past continues to be reimagined.

In the second edition of The Historical Novel , Jerome de Groot expertly charts the evolution of one of literature’s most beloved and complex forms. From its eighteenth-century origins to postmodern and contemporary historical fiction, de Groot reveals how historical fiction continues to challenge, provoke, and transform our understanding of the past. The second edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded with global perspectives and new emphasis on the role and importance of female writers throughout. Readers will discover fresh insights on: different genres, such as sensational or ‘low’ fiction, crime novels, literary works, counterfactual writing and related issues of audience, value, and authenticity; the many functions of historical fiction, particularly the challenges it poses to accepted histories and postmodern questioning of ‘grand narratives’; the relationship of the historical novel to the wider cultural sphere with reference to historical theory, the internet, television, and film; key theoretical concepts such as the authentic fallacy, postcolonialism, Marxism, Neo-Victorian approaches, critical race theory, queer and feminist reading; works which diversify our understanding of the form and reflect an increasing sense that the writer should be understood as intervening in historical debates—including the work of Hilary Mantel, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Townsend Warner, W. G. Sebald, Chinua Achebe, Sarah Waters, Amitav Ghosh, George Eliot, and Leo Tolstoy. Drawing on a wide range of examples from across the centuries and around the globe, the second edition of The Historical Novel is essential reading for exploring the rich intersection where history meets fiction—a creative borderland where the past continues to be reimagined.

Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) is now recognized as one of the most innovative and best-informed literary critics of the twentieth century. Trained in the German philosophic tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, he escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to the Soviet Union in 1933. There he faced a new set of problems: Stalinist dogmatism about literature and literary criticism. Maneuvering between the obstacles of censorship, he wrote and published his longest work of literary criticism, The Historical Novel, in 1937. Beginning with the novels of Sir Walter Scott, The Historical Novel documents the evolution of a genre that came to dominate European fiction in the years after Napoleon. The novel had reached a point at which it could be socially and politically critical as well as psychologically insightful. Lukacs devotes his final chapter to the anti-Nazi fiction of Germany and Austria.

Georg Lukacs (1885-1971) is now recognized as one of the most innovative and best-informed literary critics of the twentieth century. Trained in the German philosophic tradition of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, he escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to the Soviet Union in 1933. There he faced a new set of problems: Stalinist dogmatism about literature and literary criticism. Maneuvering between the obstacles of censorship, he wrote and published his longest work of literary criticism, The Historical Novel, in 1937. Beginning with the novels of Sir Walter Scott, The Historical Novel documents the evolution of a genre that came to dominate European fiction in the years after Napoleon. The novel had reached a point at which it could be socially and politically critical as well as psychologically insightful. Lukacs devotes his final chapter to the anti-Nazi fiction of Germany and Austria.