The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a great – and little-known – resource for historical novelists. Frances Quinn found the idea for her new book, That Bonesetter Woman, there. As anyone who’s had dealings with the publishing industry will know, one of the things it loves best is ‘the same, but different’; in other […]
The gift of writing historical fiction
Liz Hyder, author of The Gifts, talks about her own writing process and her love of history, and celebrates the “fascinating, brilliant, inspiring joy” of writing historical fiction. Her book has just been published in paperback. I’ve always been interested in history ever since I can remember. I grew up near the edge of Epping […]
Historia interviews: Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s acclaimed second novel, Daughters of Night, is shortlisted for the 2022 Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award. To celebrate this, Historia dragged her away from editing her next book to talk about the award and her writing. Congratulations on being shortlisted! For anyone who hasn’t yet read Daughters of Night, can you sum it […]
Writing yourself into history: top tips for memoirs
Have you considered writing a book about yourself? A memoir, autobiography, or family history, or even just a private record for your relatives or friends? Jean Fullerton, East Ender and bestselling author, has her own autobiography coming out and learned some useful tips which she’s passing on here. Before I start, can I warn you […]
Unboxing Pandora’s myth – in Georgian London
Susan Stokes-Chapman, author of Pandora, tells Historia why the Regency period is the perfect era for a retelling of a Greek myth – and how she went about unboxing it for her debut novel. As someone whose knowledge of Greek mythology went no farther than one module on the subject at university in 2004, I’m […]
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
One Wednesday morning in November, 1912, the ageing Thomas Hardy, entombed by paper and books and increasingly estranged from his wife Emma, finds her dying in her bedroom. Between his speaking to her and taking her in his arms, she has gone. The day before, he and Emma had exchanged bitter words, leading Hardy to […]
Reconstructing Emma Hardy’s secret diaries
The Chosen is Elizabeth Lowry’s new novel about the days immediately following the death of Thomas Hardy’s first wife, Emma, in November, 1912, and of Hardy’s writing of Tess of the d’Urbervilles some 20 years earlier. It’s also the story of how some of the greatest love poems in English, Hardy’s Poems of 1912–13, came […]
Apples, Chelsea, and my route to the plant hunters
How did an apple tree and a lecture about the history of Chelsea give TL Mogford the idea which his first historical novel grew from? He tells Historia about his route to The Plant Hunter, set in Victorian England and in China. When I was seven years old, my family left the cosy Oxfordshire village […]