Depending on your definition, I have written a number of historical novels. Portland Place and Wachusett are set in the 19th century. Lost Lady is set in the 1920s, and Nantucket Summer and The Countess Comes Home are set in late 1960s and early 70s.
While I would not have considered the 1920s to be a historical novel setting because it's the time when my parents were growing up, it is now a hundred years ago. As for the 60s and early 70s, as far as today's youth is concerned, that was shortly after the Jurassic period.
What writing these books has meant - and I never set out to be an historical novelist - is that I spent a lot of time looking into daily life in the periods covered. Finding out what people ate at a mountain resort hotel in 1876, or how they lit their rooms was fascinating, and not easy to discover. Fortunately, today there are some wonderful resources for historical novelists on the web and this information can be winkled out.
Another unexpected source was eBay. A lot of paper ephemera comes up for sale and, with regular watching, I was able to turn up a tariff and sample menu for the long-gone hotel I was writing about.
Sometimes, the things you discover are unexpectedly thought-provoking.
An example of this came when not long ago, my mother was down-sizing and gave me a painting by her father. I had always loved it. It had hung in my aunt's house, and when she went into a nursing home, I expected the picture to be passed to her children, but it went to my mother.
My grandfather's listed occupation was photographer but his work covered what would be described as a graphic designer today. He began taking pictures in the 1880s and continued to do so until his death in 1945. He was also a reasonable amateur painter and was friends with the noted painter of Civil War naval battles, Xanthus Smith. Smith must have thought him a decent painter as they used to paint together, and my mother remembered playing at Smith's "castle" outside Philadelphia as a little girl.
I find the painting (below) of the beach at Ocean City, New Jersey, fascinating for a number of reasons. First, it's in a portrait format. This is unusual for landscapes of any sort, and remarkable for a seascape (though this is more a skyscape). Secondly, the horizon is less than a third of the way up the painting. The ocean itself, in minuscule, yet the waves are beautifully painted and translucent.
It was painted in 1940, so by the time I received it, it had 75 years' of grime and smoke and discoloured varnish. I had it cleaned, and there was a surprise.
On the horizon, what I had taken to more cloud or mist was revealed to be smoke from passing ships, en route to and from New York or Philadelphia. While no ship is depicted, there is a clear (or not-so-clear) source of smoke about a third of the way along from the left.
There are people today who moan about contrails carving up the sky, but compared to what the smokey seas smelling of coal must have been like, some linear vapour trails are a pretty minor annoyance.
My intention isn't to start an environmental argument but to note the selectivity of what is recorded. Smoke on the horizon does not figure in family tales about days at the beach, but they were very much part of the experience.
G. C. Ramsey in his book Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery (Dodd, Mead, 1967), observes that ordinary, even mediocre, detective fiction creates a stunningly detailed picture of life in the period portrayed. With every object potentially a clue, it is important to camouflage the real clues in a shoal of red herrings. [NB, Ramsey was granted the first interview given by Christie since her disappearance in 1926.]
In consequence, readers are able to picture a room with remarkable precision, complete with antimacassars, Morris chairs, push-button light switches, Hawthorne strainers, Du Maurier ovals, and other ephemera of the period.
Perhaps there are novels in which smokey horizons get a mention, but they probably date from the transition from sail to steam, and not the 20s, 30s and 40s when coal smoke would have been commonplace.
Writers - especially historical novelists - are confronted with a bizarre collection of historic nuts to crack, and pursuit of esoteric questions can itself turn into a detective story.
While I would not have considered the 1920s to be a historical novel setting because it's the time when my parents were growing up, it is now a hundred years ago. As for the 60s and early 70s, as far as today's youth is concerned, that was shortly after the Jurassic period.
What writing these books has meant - and I never set out to be an historical novelist - is that I spent a lot of time looking into daily life in the periods covered. Finding out what people ate at a mountain resort hotel in 1876, or how they lit their rooms was fascinating, and not easy to discover. Fortunately, today there are some wonderful resources for historical novelists on the web and this information can be winkled out.
Another unexpected source was eBay. A lot of paper ephemera comes up for sale and, with regular watching, I was able to turn up a tariff and sample menu for the long-gone hotel I was writing about.
Sometimes, the things you discover are unexpectedly thought-provoking.
An example of this came when not long ago, my mother was down-sizing and gave me a painting by her father. I had always loved it. It had hung in my aunt's house, and when she went into a nursing home, I expected the picture to be passed to her children, but it went to my mother.
My grandfather's listed occupation was photographer but his work covered what would be described as a graphic designer today. He began taking pictures in the 1880s and continued to do so until his death in 1945. He was also a reasonable amateur painter and was friends with the noted painter of Civil War naval battles, Xanthus Smith. Smith must have thought him a decent painter as they used to paint together, and my mother remembered playing at Smith's "castle" outside Philadelphia as a little girl.
I find the painting (below) of the beach at Ocean City, New Jersey, fascinating for a number of reasons. First, it's in a portrait format. This is unusual for landscapes of any sort, and remarkable for a seascape (though this is more a skyscape). Secondly, the horizon is less than a third of the way up the painting. The ocean itself, in minuscule, yet the waves are beautifully painted and translucent.
It was painted in 1940, so by the time I received it, it had 75 years' of grime and smoke and discoloured varnish. I had it cleaned, and there was a surprise.
On the horizon, what I had taken to more cloud or mist was revealed to be smoke from passing ships, en route to and from New York or Philadelphia. While no ship is depicted, there is a clear (or not-so-clear) source of smoke about a third of the way along from the left.
There are people today who moan about contrails carving up the sky, but compared to what the smokey seas smelling of coal must have been like, some linear vapour trails are a pretty minor annoyance.
My intention isn't to start an environmental argument but to note the selectivity of what is recorded. Smoke on the horizon does not figure in family tales about days at the beach, but they were very much part of the experience.
G. C. Ramsey in his book Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery (Dodd, Mead, 1967), observes that ordinary, even mediocre, detective fiction creates a stunningly detailed picture of life in the period portrayed. With every object potentially a clue, it is important to camouflage the real clues in a shoal of red herrings. [NB, Ramsey was granted the first interview given by Christie since her disappearance in 1926.]
In consequence, readers are able to picture a room with remarkable precision, complete with antimacassars, Morris chairs, push-button light switches, Hawthorne strainers, Du Maurier ovals, and other ephemera of the period.
Perhaps there are novels in which smokey horizons get a mention, but they probably date from the transition from sail to steam, and not the 20s, 30s and 40s when coal smoke would have been commonplace.
Writers - especially historical novelists - are confronted with a bizarre collection of historic nuts to crack, and pursuit of esoteric questions can itself turn into a detective story.
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