‘Hamilton’ and ‘Shuffle Along’ are closely connected because the ensembles are all friends, and they both deal with historical figures and the impact they’ve made on American life.
The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind – a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.
Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can’t be disproved or shown to be false.
One of the consequences of the Iranian revolution has been an explosion of history. A country once known only from British consular reports and intrepid travelogues is now awash with historical documents, letters, diaries, grainy video, weblogs and secret police files of questionable authenticity.
The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known, using that as scaffolding, and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.
The abundance of Roman historical mysteries contrasts with the surprising paucity of crime novels set in classical Greece.
I invented the historical spy novel.
Typically, an historic site is considered by the National Park Service to contain a single historical feature, while generally a National Historic Park extends beyond single properties or buildings.
What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be exposed; they panic, because they don’t know which bits are true.
My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.
The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.
‘Floating Worlds,’ published in 1975 and the lone science fiction novel by acclaimed historical novelist Cecelia Holland, was unique in being completely devoid of the usual pulp influences present in much space opera up to that time.
I’ve got nothing against records – I’ve spent my life making them – but they are a kind of historical blip.
For ‘The Grace of Kings,’ I read Han Dynasty historical records in Classical Chinese, which allowed me to get a sense of the complexity of the politics and the ‘surprisingly modern’ reactions of the historical figures to recurrent problems of state administration.
Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence?
I’ve always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I’ve even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.
Historical costumes from the 18th and 19th centuries look so complicated, but when you see the patterns, it’s very systematic. I’ve always been impressed by how the patterns economize the fabric.
The characters in my stories, whether historical or fictional, usually prove to be a compilation of influences taken from differing sources, but never drawn from one model.
I didn’t need to write historical epics, no, or science fiction, though I read a lot of science fiction as a kid and rather liked it. But I didn’t have the mentality.
What is new in all of this is that the old poles of attraction represented by nation-states, parties, professions, institutions, and historical traditions are losing their attraction.
I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn’t happen, but it might have.
After I had written seventeen full-length mysteries, two volumes of mini-mysteries, a travel guide and some quiz books, not to mention a spin-off Roman Mystery Scrolls series, I thought it was time I moved to new historical pastures.
September 11, 2001, was a terrible tragedy by any measure, but it was not a historical turning point. It did not herald a new era of international relations in which terrorists with a global agenda prevailed or in which such spectacular terrorist attacks became commonplace.
I love England and the historical aspect of it.
A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.
I almost write to formula, because there’s a historical beginning, then the plots get convoluted.
I felt like a typical kid growing up, and Lawnside is a nice town with a huge historical significance.
Perhaps I was always intensely curious, but my Columbia education gave me a framework and a perspective to investigate new things – things that could be put into a historical and philosophical lineage.
A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.
Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.
Our historical responsibility does not end at the Austrian or European border.
There are a lot of historical novelists who do the research about the clothes and maybe even the eating utensils, but they’re basically taking modern people and putting them in old drag – it’s sort of the ‘Gone With the Wind’ approach.
I read numerous books – loads in fact – and, as I always do when recording a historical project, immersed myself into the subject matter. I spent many hours at Henry’s old homes, such as Hampton Court, and visiting the Tower of London. I read no other books during that period.
Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.
You can’t believe anything that’s written in an historical novel, and yet the author’s job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It’s especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction.
Literature – novels, plays, and poems – can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.
The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.
The New Testament is not a historical document.
Denuclearization and the lasting peace on the Korean peninsula cannot be abandoned or delayed, as they are the historical assignment.
My work has taken me from historical research to involvement in electronic publishing ventures to the directorship of the Harvard University Libraries.
I think it’s possible for anybody to write what they want to write – superheroes, historical, period drama, ‘Game Of Thrones’ – it’s just how you chuck yourself into it that counts. And do your research.
I really hate the term ‘historical novel’ – it reminds me of bodice-rippers. But I’m hooked on research, and I really, really enjoy it.
We have this real problem as human beings to put people on pedestals – with celebrities, with historical figures – and we forget they’re humans just like us.
I couldn’t resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of ‘A Discovery of Witches’ throughout the pages of the novel.
There are similarities between historical novels and science fiction. Being thrown into the Napoleonic Wars is just as much of a different world as space.
Israel deserves special treatment from the United States, both for historical reasons and because there can be no regional peace without a secure Israel.
I have very purposely never signed up with commercial lecture agencies as most, I think, prominent historical authors do because, to me, that’s a contradiction of who I believe I am given my absorption of the teaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you read any of my books, they tend to have a strong historical perspective.
But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live.
Historical records show that smallpox was a human scourge for thousands of years. The virus produces high fever, severe back pain and scarring eruptions of flat red spots on the skin that turn into pustules and then into scabs – a two-week process during which the disease is highly contagious.
I was with the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the day that Srebrenica fell, which happened to be a huge historical turning point in the Bosnian war.
For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
Historical records show that Abenakis and other Natives encountered European explorers and traders in Canada looking for sources of ivory to compete with the Russian trade in Siberian fossil mammoth ivory – these traders routinely asked about ivory ‘horns’ and teeth.
