Di2 that sounds a fascinating book; I must try to get hold of it. I don't think this is - let's face it, I'm hoping it won't be - the last time someone wants me to talk on this kind of thing. In fact, there's another panel discussion on Historical Fact vs. Historical Fiction at Brisbane, and one in Christchurch.

I'd love to go to Sydney, if they asked me, but I must admit that even this is straining my childcare systems to the limit, (and I think I may have to go to the US for the launch of TMOL there in January too) so I don't know if I could make it work and still have friends and family speaking to me. Maybe I'll have to wait till the next one is published. But I'd be thrilled if you suggested it to them, thank you; it all helps.

Emma

Hi Emma, well I use the word 'sanitation' in the loosest possible sense. It does provide a theme in the current book I'm working on - which is set in summer, when I imagine St P stank to high heaven, with open drains and human excrement floating in the canals (sorry). The reason I am using it as a theme is because it provides a kind of metaphor, I think. The way health problems are linked to the woeful sanition provision is paralleled by the link between crime and social ills. That's my idea anyhow.

Anyhow - as for right and wrong. Yes, I suppose some things work (and are therefore right) and some things don't (wrong). I think what I meant was more 'there are no hard and fast rules'. I'm reading 'To the Hermitage' by Malcolm Bradbury - he has a post-modernist's approach to writing historical fiction. Bradbury uses obviously anachronistic expressions and similes etc... I'm not sure a true devotee of hardcore historical fiction would be at all impressed by it! I always try to limit my similes to things that were known to the people at the time. That does present a challenge - because the point of a simile, in purely functional terms, is to add to the meaning by providing a reference point that makes sense to the reader(?). Bradbury quite happily does this, bringing in lots of modern comparisons, so that the contemporary author is very present in the text, and is having a kind of knowing dialogue with the contemporary reader. It must be quite liberating to write like this, but I feel it would break the illusion if I did it. So, it's a rule I abide by, though it's not a hard and fast rule that everyone has to stick to. Depends what you're trying to achieve, I suppose.

Brisbane, hey! Wow. I thought I was doing well when I was invited to talk to some writers in Hillingdon.


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sanition = sanitation

I always try to limit my similes to things that were known to the people at the time.

Yes, me too. Apart from anything else, I think it's good for one's writing, because you have to think harder. And I remember the director of the TV P&P, the one with Colin Firth, saying that of course you couldn't use a helicopter shot in it, as that was a viewpoint they wouldn't have had, which was something I'd never have thought of, but is true. But lots of films wouldn't think like that, and does it break our illusion? If illusion is what it is?

This thread is so brilliant! That's another interesting point I wouldn't have remembered otherwise.

I must have a look at the Bradbury - that sounds interesting. I try to like the postmodern thing, but mostly it reminds me of the six-year old at the pantomime enjoying annoying his little sister by pointing out the strings that make Peter Pan fly. Interestingly, Possession, which is ostensibly postmodern, very carefully doesn't break the frame of the 19th Century bit. I found myself saying in my MPhil Critical Paper that Byatt uses postmodern means to come to a very un-postmodern conclusion, that stories matter, and aren't just fodder for cleverness. Fndamentally I don't think postmodernism is anything revolutionary, because it depends on setting up a traditional relationship to the story (illusion? suspension of disbelief?) in order to play with or deconstruct it.

Your sanitation-crime link I'm sure is right, factually and metaphorically, even metaphysically. Have you read Our Mutual Friend? The great fortune in that is made by a man who controls London's 'dustheaps', (by which of course Dickens means shit though I don't think my English teacher said that loudly enough for me to go on reading it that way at school!) and 'turns' them into gold i.e. money. The hero is the true heir to the fortune is lost, and the heroine's job at the beginning is fishing dead bodies out of the Thames with her father. And now I come to think of it, it's all very Freudian, too.

Emma

I made a decision ages ago that I could use anything written in a history book as a fact, even if it was contradicted elsewhere, because I'm not a historian and don't have to be bound by their rules.

I think that's a pretty reasonable decision to make. I suppose the main reason for a fiction writer to look into primary sources would be when you're writing about real people and want to get as 'close' to them as possible... Then again, might that not be a bit counter-productive as well? Is it possible to know your subject too well, so that you end up paralysed by all the information?

It's probably a rare dilemma, but still...

Oh, I just thought of another topic -- the usefulness (and possible dangers) of reading fiction of the period. I think it has to do with the way you approach your subject. You can usually tell when the writer is writing in a fictional framework (Heyer springs to mind), or when she's trying to uncover the 'truth' of the period by trying to understand lives as they were really experienced (I'm guessing you probably read a lot of letters, diaries, and first-hand accounts for TMOL?). Or when the writer is writing from a decidedly modern, detached point of view, as seems to be the case in much 'literary' historical fiction today -- it's funny how often these writers mention their indebtedness to more general history books in their Acknowledgements.

I don't know if any of these approaches is better than the others, but I must admit I often find myself annoyed by examples of the last, because even when the material facts are splendidly accurate, often much effort doesn't seem to have gone into understanding people's lives as they were lived. Usually there's an ultra-modern hero/heroine with a liberal, completely unprejudiced outlook, and the less sympathetic characters are little more than personifications of stereotypical 'period attitudes'.

Then again, might that not be a bit counter-productive as well? Is it possible to know your subject too well, so that you end up paralysed by all the information?

I think that can definitely happen - usually when you've got a history book in the other hand while you're trying to write, or stuck between two different versions in two different books. There's a good deal of Heyer in TMOL, if you know where to look, but also of course Jane Austen and the memoir I used, Kincaid's Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, which is the most gorgeous book, with an interestingly WW2 flavour about it - the 'well, it was a bit of a mess but we laughed about it afterwards,' attitude to nightmarish bloodbaths.

I'm definitely not putting a bibliography in the new novel - TMOL doesn't have one either. I was slightly staggered at the Historical Novel Society Conference just how many of the people there clearly read historical fiction because it's 'history lite', having been put off the real thing at school. 'But they're stories', I kept thinking, 'and I reserve the right to get it all 'wrong' if it suits me'. And besides, half the time I can't remember what I used. I have thought I might put 'Further Reading' on my website, though, safely away from the book itself.

Emma

Hi Emma - yes, I have read Our Mutual Friend. I'd say it was my favourite Dickens, of the ones I've read, which is by no means all.

Your film analogy got me thinking about the fashions in historical films/TV dramas have changed over the years. I love those 60s Hollywood films with Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas in, where they have 60s style haircuts and look like people of their time, but they are playing Vikings or Romans or whatever. And, of course, they speak in American accents. But then again, why shouldn't they? The way each generation re-presents the past is very interesting and probably the subject of a good PhD in itself. (Probably been done.)


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I think there's a 'way' missing from that somewhere.

where they have 60s style haircuts and look like people of their time, but they are playing Vikings or Romans or whatever.

It's true, but I suspect that our equivalent film stars will look equally of their time 50 years from now. That kind of thing is invisible at the time - it's one of the ways you detect forgeries: what looks like a perfect Raphael madonna to the buyer in 1850, in 1950 clearly is a simpering mid-Victorian miss.

I was a card-carrying Dickens hater - I do think making A Christmas Carol a teenager's first Dickens experience is a mistake - though I'm glad I had to do OMF for A Level. Read Tale of Two Cities recently with a lot of pleasure, but it's always said to be the least Dickensian, so maybe that's why. I still have a problem with 'Dickensian' hist fic now, and liked Fingersmith in spite of more than because of it.

Emma

I love historical fiction of all kinds and would love to attend such a talk. One question I'd be interested to know about is how "ordinary" people get to use specialist resources such as the British Library or the Bodleian for researching their writing ? Now if Emma is based in Oz she might not be the best person to ask about this - does anyone else on the list know ?

On the subject of historical novels, one of my favourite series is George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman Papers. Now I know these books look as if they are standard bodice-ripping blood-and-thunder yarns like Sharpe &c., but nothing could be further from the truth: they are extremely clever and witty comic novels which revolve as much around character-based humour and matters of social class and the travails of "an Englishman abroad" as the big historical events and battles. They aren't exactly high literature, but I have read few novels which handle the concept of the "anti-hero" quite so cleverly: Flashman himself is a repugnant bully/misogynist/coward/snob with no redeeming features whatsoever and yet as a reader it becomes impossible not to like him. The author also has a lot of fun inventing "footnotes" and other marginalia which supplement or contradict the historical detail contained in the narrative (told in the form of memoirs).

Griff, I'm not based in Oz, I live in London. And I agree with you about Flashman - great stuff, and yes, much more interesting than the covers might make you think!

The British Library is easy to join, and it's all on the large but reasonably well-organised website: lots of WW members use it. As far as I can tell there's nothing to stop anyone joining if they fill in the forms and produce some ID.

I don't know about the Bodleian, but I'm sure the website would tell you. It may be like any university library, or you may have to prove that you've exhausted the possibilities elsewhere. Your local university library would probably be pretty useful too, and once you're a member of one there are networks to enable you to use others, in a slightly more limited way. And there's an amazing amount of original material online. I went hunting for medieval troubadour lyrics, and got everything I needed without stirring from my chair.

If you have a fairy godmother (or even a generous incarnation of the ordinary kind) you might want to consider joining the London Library, very scholarly with a bias towards arts and humanities which is a subscription library, but utterly wonderful, with the enormous merit that all the books are a) on open access shelves, and b) borrowable and c) they don't charge fines and d) you can run a postal account with them, and get books posted to and fro if you can't get there. Oh, and they've never thrown away a book, so you can find original Baedecker guides to Odessa in 1970, say, there for the picking up. They do a reduced sub for the young, and bursaries. http://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/

Emma

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Odessa in 1870 I mean. Though come to think of it, 1970 would also need research.

Emma - Thanks very much for the help. I'll definitely follow up on your suggestions.

Yes, join the London Library. I nipped over there at lunchtime - a short hop from the office. Best £190 I ever spent. There are no fines as such - but if you don't return the book after they've asked you nicely twice ...let's just say you'll be glad to see a horse's head at the end of your bed on waking.

Jim

Griff - you're welcome.

Jim - isn't it just the most fantastic place? And now that they're going to have a place for coffee, the only thing wrong with it has been solved.

Emma

I think I'd echo some of the above. I'd like to know about how to research, both the times - and how to reference it without sounding obvious - and the type of speech, etiquette, difference between written and spoken word, and the most common pitfalls i.e. assume that everyone is educated to write so make an inappropriate character write a letter or something (obvious example I know).

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bit late now i guess. sorry

Not too late - I'm in Christchurch now, and off to Brisbane on Sunday. Thanks, JA.