A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales | Page 6

illustrate certain stages in the growth of Historical Romance. With the
exclusion of Mrs. Radcliffe, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Gore, Lady Blessington,
Lady Fullerton, Mrs. Bray, and Mrs. Child, few will, I imagine, find
fault; but writers like Miss Tucker (A. L. O. E.) and Miss Emily Holt
still find so many readers in juvenile quarters, that it has required a
certain amount of courage to place them also on my Index
Expurgatorius! Turning once again to writers of the sterner sex, I have

ruled out C. R. Maturin, G. W. M. Reynolds, and Pierce Egan, Junr.;
and (quitting the "sensational" for the "mildly entertaining") out of the
Rev. J. M. Neale's many historical tales I have selected only
one--"Theodora Phranza," which, besides being well written, has the
merit of dealing with a somewhat neglected period. Stories possessing
a background of History are to be found in "Tales from Blackwood," as
also in "Wilson's Tales of the Borders," but their extremely slight
character seemed scarcely to justify insertion; while not even the high
literary position attained by him on other grounds reconciled me to
either of Allan Cunningham's novels--"Sir Michael Scott" and "Paul
Jones."
Of the Foreign novelists appearing in my list, several have been already
named, but Marchese D'Azeglio, F. D. Guerrazzi, Cesare Cantu, "W.
Alexis" (G. Haring), H. Laube, Louise Mulbach (Klara M. Mundt),
Nicolas Josika, Viktor Rydberg, Hendrik Conscience, Xavier B.
Saintine, Amedee Achard, and "Erckmann-Chatrian" here call for
notice as not coming under strictly Contemporary classification. I
would forestall the criticism that two writers have been passed over
whose fame is greater than any of those just mentioned, viz.:
"Stendhal" (Henri Beyle) and Alphonse Daudet. Beyle's "La Chartreuse
de Parme," though containing the oft-praised account of Waterloo, is
far more Psychological than Historical; and Daudet's "Robert
Helmont," while it depicts (under Diary form) certain aspects of the
Franco-German War, has hardly any plot running through it. As the
Waterloo and Franco-German War periods were amply illustrated in
numerous other novels of more assured suitability, I had the less
hesitation in deciding against the two works just named. In the
selections from Foreign Historical Fiction nothing more has been
attempted than to include the leading examples; most of these, it will be
found, have been translated into English.
Before leaving the subject of older writers, it may be mentioned that
not a few of the works chosen to represent them are, at the moment, out
of print. To anyone objecting that something ought to have been done
to indicate this in each separate case, I would urge that the "out of
print" line can never be drawn with precision in view of constant

reprints as well as of further extinctions.
Perhaps this introduction may be most fitly concluded by something in
the nature of apology for Historical Romance itself. Not only has fault
been found with the deficiencies of unskilled authors in that department,
but the question has been asked by one or two critics of standing--What
right has the Historical Novel to exist at all? More often than not, it is
pointed out, the Romancist gives us a mass of inaccuracies, which,
while they mislead the ignorant (i.e., the majority?), are an
unpardonable offence to the historically-minded reader. Moreover, the
writer of such Fiction, though he be a Thackeray or a Scott, cannot
surmount barriers which are not merely hard to scale, but absolutely
impassable. The spirit of a period is like the selfhood of a human
being--something that cannot be handed on; try as we may, it is
impossible for us to breathe the atmosphere of a bygone time, since all
those thousand- and-one details which went to the building up of both
individual and general experience, can never be reproduced. We
consider (say) the Eighteenth Century from the purely Historical
standpoint, and, while we do so, are under no delusion as to our
limitations; we know that a few of the leading personages and events
have been brought before us in a more or less disjointed fashion, and
are perfectly aware that there is room for much discrepancy between
the pictures so presented to us (be it with immense skill) and the actual
facts as they took place in such and such a year. But, goes on the
objector, in the case of a Historical Romance we allow ourselves to be
hoodwinked, for, under the influence of a pseudo- historic security, we
seem to watch the real sequence of events in so far as these affect the
characters in whom we are interested. How we seem to live in those
early years of the Eighteenth Century, as we follow Henry Esmond
from point to point, and yet, in truth, we are breathing not the
atmosphere of Addison and Steele, but the atmosphere created by the
brilliant Nineteenth