Chris, the thing I never established before the past historic and the subjunctive escaped me totally and then the whole lot wiped the day after my last O Level, was at what point of formality you'd move from ordinary pasts - perfect, imperfect and pluperfect - into using past historic. Obviously for novels, say, and presumably formal non-fiction. But diaries? letters? What about novels which are written in those forms, for instance...

Emma

Issy, if you want more interesting tenses - how about the present and imperfect subjunctive, almost forgotten these days in English. Or if you like a little Simon Says, how about the imperative mood. Now that's real fun!

James

Emma – As you say the past historic literary tense (passé simple) is the normal past tense used in French novels and non-fiction.

For the other two literary tenses – passé surcomposé and passé antérieur – it’s best to consult your grammar book! I mention them only because formal letter-writing sometimes demands the use of the passé surcomposé in some subordinate clauses so it’s necessary to distinguish between formal and more personal corrrespondence.

I’m sure you’re talking about informal personal correspondence and here the spoken approach would be the norm (but that may not have been the case in earlier times which you may be thinking about – I’m not an expert). I think the same would apply to personal diaries. I am sure that if you are writing a novel in letter or diary style, you would adopt the spoken as if you were writing the original, including the use of the perfect (passé composé). That was certainly the case with parts of Alphonse Daudet’s Lettres de Mon Moulin (1866) – 'Cette nuit je n’ai pas pu dormir... '

Chris