My guest is historical author, Anne Cleeland. Fascinating lady and one who writes an excellent tale of adventure, danger, spies, and suspense set in regency England. Today she shares some of her thoughts on research and writing historicals.
I am lucky enough to have two series debuting this summer—and neither of them draws from personal experience. I’m a lifelong California native, but I’m writing a Regency adventure series and a British detective mystery series—that features an Irish heroine, no less. It almost goes without saying that precise accuracy will be abandoned in the interest of telling a good story, but how much license should be taken, and at what point do you run the risk of having the reader abandon your implausible ship?
There are no easy answers, but
along the way I've attended a few panels on the knotty problem of how accurate
you should be when writing historicals, so for those of you who read or write
historical novels, I thought I’d pass along what I've gleaned.
In the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, neither Elizabeth
Bennett nor Mr. Darcy wear gloves to the formal Netherfield ball—an omission
that would have been unheard of at the time; both would have gone home rather
than attend bare-handed. In Downton Abbey,
one of the streets in the town has a double yellow line—not exactly Edwardian.
The movie Braveheart tells us that
the future Edward III was the product of a liaison between William Wallace and
Isabella of France. The problem is,
Wallace was executed seven years before Edward was born, and Isabella of France
was nine at the time Wallace was executed.
Are the stories any less
compelling? The answer probably depends on your perspective. If you teach
history—or are just a purist in general—these liberties are unacceptable and
your disbelief is no longer suspended.
On the other hand, if you are not familiar with the era, you may not
even notice these types of errors, but you may also come away with a distorted
view of historical fact. The trick to
writing a story from an earlier time period is to find the right balance
between dry-as-dust history and an engaging story, and how accurate you need to
be—at least in my opinion—depends on your target readership.
If, for example, you are writing
“hot” Regencies, strict accuracy is necessarily abandoned unless you write
about the demi-monde, because nice young ladies didn't fool around (and were
never given an opportunity, even if they were so inclined.) I know some may want to argue about this
point, but remember that Jane Austen served as a reporter at the scene, so to
speak, and in her books it was a scandal if an unmarried woman wrote a letter
to a man she was not yet engaged to. “Nice” women of the time were chaperoned
within an inch of their lives until they were handed over to a husband with the
correct pedigree.
So it seems that the question is
not whether to take liberties with
historical accuracy, it is how much liberty to take. My own rule of
thumb is to never write anything that would “jolt” the average reader
out of the story’s time frame—not the average history professor, just the
average reader.
- How much accuracy do you like to see from your favorite historical writers? Can you think of any other examples where an anachronism “jolted” you out of the story?
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TAINTED ANGEL Anne Cleeland
A Deadly Game of Deception...
Notorious and beautiful,
Vidia Swanson works as an "angel," trying to coax incriminating
secrets from powerful men who may or may not be traitors of the Crown. Her
latest target is suspected of stealing gold from Wellington's troops, but
matters take an alarming turn when Vidia realizes that her spymaster thinks she
is the one who is tainted—a double agent working for Napoleon.
"A world of spies and traitors where no one is quite what they seem and the truth is only true for a moment...a thrilling take that will keep you guessing until the very last page."—Victoria Thompson, author of Murder in Chelsea
Anne Cleeland holds a degree in English from
UCLA as well as a degree in law from Pepperdine University, and is a member of
the California State Bar. She writes a historical
fiction series set in the Regency period as well as a contemporary mystery series
set in New Scotland Yard. A member of
the Historical Novel Society and Mystery Writers of America, she lives in
California and has four children.
