One of the most popular sub-genres of historical fiction is the historical mystery, whodunits set in the past. A crossover genre between modern detective fiction and historical fiction, it has all the narrative power of a murder mystery but with the added bonus of meticulous historical detail. The earliest historical mysteries date back to the 1930s and titles continued to appear at a steady rate, but it was not until the 1970s that they started to become the publishing phenomenon that they are today.
The most famous of these early historical mysteries does not actually conform to the genre. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, published in 1951, has a contemporary setting and features her serial detective, Alan Grant. Laid up in hospital with a broken leg, to relieve his boredom, he investigates the murder of the Princes in the Tower, attributed to the much maligned Richard III. He concludes that the boys survived their uncle and were killed by Henry VII. Although its conclusions are contested, the novel is well regarded in historical circles as an authentic work of historical research albeit couched in fictional terms. Its title derives from the old proverb ‘Truth is the daughter of time.’
However, the writer who did most to establish the genre’s current popularity is Ellis Peters (aka Edith Pargeter) and her wonderful creation, Brother Cadfael. Cadfael is a shrewd and pragmatic monk with a gift with herbs, but more importantly, having been a crusader in his past, with a deep understanding of human nature under stress. He lives in Shrewsbury Abbey, on the border between England and his native Wales, during the turbulent years of the twelfth-century civil war between Stephen and Matilda. Thus it is no wonder that murder and violence are common occurrences, crimes to which Cadfael brings both insight and compassion. His delightful adventures are recounted in a series of twenty books which began with A Morbid Taste For Bones in 1977.
Historical mysteries cover the whole gamut of history and geography. They range from ancient times to the early twentieth century and across Europe, Egypt, China, America and even Australia. Fiona Buckley’s Ursula Blanchard is at the Tudor court of Elizabeth I. Paul Doherty’s Lord Amerotke presides over the court of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut in ancient Egypt. Caleb Carr’s Dr Laszlo Kreizler is a pioneering psychologist in the New York in the 1890s. Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher lives in style in St Kilda in the 1920s.
The detectives themselves also cover a wide range. Some hold official positions such as Michael Jecks’ Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Keeper of the King’s Peace, or are gifted amateurs with some useful expertise, such as Susanna Gregory’s physician, Matthew Bartholomew, or Elizabeth Peters’ Egyptologist, Amelia Peabody. Most are fictional characters but they may associate with real historical personages, particularly their sovereign, such as Sharon Penman’s Justin de Quincy who works for Eleanor of Aquitaine, or Paul Doherty’s Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal to Edward I. Some are actual, if obscure historical characters, such as Derryn Lake’s apothecary, John Rawlings, the otherwise unknown inventor of soda water.
The most intriguing are the amateur detectives who actually lived and who must have had many exciting but otherwise unrecorded adventures, such as Janet Laurence’s Canaletto, the famous Venetian painter, W Palmer’s Charles Dickens and Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen. The most exceptional of these are written by Elliot Roosevelt whose stories feature his own mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, solving mysteries in the White House.
Many of the writers are historians or hold related qualifications. Sharan Newman, whose heroine, Catherine LeVendeur, lives in twelfth century France, is an academic historian. She finds that studying history is in itself detective work – putting together clues from various sources to find out what really happened and then writing up the findings. However, she tells us, ‘I’ve read so many reviews of historical research accusing the author of writing fiction that it seemed only sensible for me to put in some dialogue and call it that.’ She says she does as much primary research for her mysteries as she does for academic papers. She sees her books as teaching tools, showing her period from every angle and giving her readers a real insight into the mind-set of the people of the time.
The more successful historical mysteries do bring their period to life and teach us something new. Lindsey Davis' series, set in Imperial Rome, is a good example. With every volume, Davis takes her hero, the informer Marcus Didius Falco, into another aspect of life in Rome and the Roman Empire. However, the success of her books does not only lie in her research, but also in their charm. While her characters are intrinsically Italian (Falco is constantly fending off his large and demanding family), Davis describes ancient Rome in the lively language she might use if she were writing about modern Chicago or London.
While Davis’ books are written with comic irony, Margaret Lawrence gives us a trilogy that is devastating in its depiction of New England in the aftermath of the American War of Independence, a war she sees, not as a Disneyfied heroic contest, but as a dark and dirty civil war. Her heroine, Hannah Trevor, a single mother, mid-wife and healer, is herself scarred by her experiences, experiences she must relive as she investigates crimes whose origins can all be traced back to the brutality and betrayal of that war.
If you are, as am I, a fan of both crime and historical fiction, then you must give historical mysteries a try. However, a word of warning, the quality of the writing does vary from pedestrian to excellent. Yet I am sure you will soon find your favourites as I have.
If you would like to know more try the HISTORICAL MYSTERY FICTION website. Several of the authors mentioned also have home pages, such as Caleb Carr, Lindsey Davis, PC Doherty, Sharan Newman, Ellis Peters and Elizabeth Peters.
When I told a friend of mine that I was interested in writing historical romance, she lent me a Regency Romance anthology she had recently read and enjoyed. I’m afraid she was a little hurt by my reaction, as I was disgusted by the book. It wasn’t just the American idiom, shallow characterisation and sloppy plotting. Call me a prude, but what upset me the most was the sex. Not only was it tasteless, but it was completely anachronistic. The very awfulness of this book set me to wondering: Whatever has become of the Regency Romance?
I guess I was so offended because I have a great fondness for Regency Romance. I first discovered the period through Georgette Heyer, whom I read avidly as a teenager. However, above and beyond the pleasure she gave me, I have also her to thank for introducing me to her major influence, probably the greatest women novelists in the English language, Jane Austen. As I was reading this rubbish, all I could think of was that Georgette and Jane would be spinning in their graves if they knew what had become of the tradition they had begun.
The historical English Regency occurred between 1811 and 1820, the period in which the future George IV stood regent for his father who was insane for the last years of his life. The Prince of Wales was renowned for his extravagance and dissipation. His world was one of luxury and high fashion. It was a time when the overly elaborate fashions of the previous centuries gave way to simplicity of line for both men and women. Wigs had been discarded. Women wore straight high-waisted gowns, and men dark, fitted coats, plain breeches and white cravats. But what the fashions had lost in decoration, they made up for in elegance. Its mores ranged from the pragmatic morality of the Georgian period to the sexual constraint of the Victorian era. This is also the period of the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath, and of the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
However, the literary Regency as we know it today is a world of its own, created and mediated by the writers in a genre that was began by Jane Austen, established by Georgette Heyer, and fostered by Barbara Cartland.
The first and the greatest writer of Regency Romances was Jane Austen, whose stories and characters we all know well, on the screen, if not on the page. Jane Austen’s novels were set in this era, but, of course, she was not writing historical fiction, but about her own time, place and class. She was a scrupulous observer and gave us a meticulous representation of the, admittedly, narrow world she knew, the world of the English country gentry of the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jane Austen’s characters are not titled, but they do have long and honourable pedigrees, own large estates and command comfortable incomes. In this world, birth is not the only qualification. What makes a man a gentleman or a woman a lady, is not just their birth but their behaviour. They live by a strict moral code that applies to both men and women.
Jane Austen makes quite clear what kind of behaviour is acceptable, what she calls, the proprieties. There can be no intimacy, physical or otherwise, between unmarried young people. Jane Austen’s young lovers call each other by their surnames until they are engaged and do not as much as kiss even then. A young lady does not engage in private correspondence with a man unless she is engaged to him. A promise to marry must be a public declaration, so secret engagements are frowned upon and always lead to unhappiness. Elopements are a disgrace and a tragedy. Of course these rules are broken – even the virginal Jane Austen knew about the temptations of the flesh – but it is never her main characters that succumb and the characters that do either suffer the consequences, or prove to be morally deficient.
Jane Austen’s heroines might be sexually innocent, but they are not weak, blushing flowers. Although confined to the home by their social position, they have great intelligence and moral strength. However, their intelligence is not engaged in challenging their social milieu, but in understanding and respecting it. Their strength lies not in fighting against their lot but in appreciating and keeping to a moral code which protects their dignity and integrity. To abandon this code leaves a woman open to sexual exploitation and ruin. It is this strength and intelligence that they bring to a relationship, rather than submission to sexual desire, either their own or the man’s.
Jane Austen’s heroes are not necessarily dashing or handsome. In fact she rarely bothers to describe them. She is much more interested in how they act and their values. They are sometimes reserved, but always well mannered. They may be flawed, but at bottom they must be honourable men. The women who grow to love them must be able to see past these flaws and accept them as they are. We also have the anti-hero, the attractive man who charms our heroine, but who proves to be false. These men are held up as a contrast to the hero who might not be as plausible, but who will prove to be much more worthy. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt if he can also command a few thousand a year!
Georgette Heyer regarded Jane Austen as a model and emulated her ironic tone. However, while Austen wrote about the gentry class, Heyer wrote about aristocrats who, secure in their social position, were not as closely tied to Austen’s proprieties. Although Heyer denied she was a feminist, Austen’s demure heroines were not for her. Heyer’s central female characters are independently minded women, with a physical freedom Austen’s women would never have dreamed of. The typical Heyer heroine is a young woman with a great deal of character, who, having been brought up more as a boy than a girl, tends to have mannish habits.
Neither do Heyer’s heroes owe anything to Jane Austen, but are influenced rather by Charlotte Bronte and the Baroness Orczy. Heyer has two main hero types modelled on Mr Rochester and the Scarlet Pimpernel. The first is dark and swarthy, compelling rather than handsome. Proud and arrogant, he is brusque, cutting and savage with a foul temper. Heyer herself called him ‘a horrid type whom no woman in possession of her senses could endure for more than half a day’. The second is a deceptively elegant man with iron beneath the silk. He is rich, suave, extremely fashionably dressed, with a drawling, ironic turn of phrase and an affectation of cynicism and boredom.
Heyer’s plots turn on the merry battle between two strong characters as they inadvertently fall in love. Although her novels share many elements – such as the marriage of convenience, long unacknowledged passions, heroines dressed as boys, the attempted elopement, the dramatic abduction – Heyer expertly manipulates these elements in inventive, well constructed plots.
Like Austen, however, Heyer is not really a romantic, and often the sub-plot, which may end in a ineffectual attempt to elope, will mock the romantic theme of the main plot in which two more mature people are seeking a meaningful relationship. Also like Austen, Heyer leaves sex behind closed doors. It is not entirely denied, as more often than not the battle of the sexes is resolved in physical contact, but it is kept in its place.
Barbara Cartland, the doyen of romance, might not be the greatest exponent of Regency Romance, but she is surely its most prolific. By no means a gifted or stylistic writer, Cartland made the most of her limited talent through her ferocious energy and single-mindedness. Obsessed with setting records, she made her rate of production her only important criterion. During her career she published 723 books, which were translated into some 40 languages and on her death left behind 130 unpublished novels wrapped in pink ribbon. Dictating at the rate of over 3,000 words an hour, two hours a day, she could produce a book a fortnight.
Although Cartland occasionally wrote contemporary romances, she preferred the idealized world of the nineteenth century and is best remembered for her quasi-historial Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian romances. She took great pride in her conservative values. Her heroines are virgins and heroes dashing. There is no sex before marriage but each kiss is an ecstatic experience. Her novels tend to follow a formula in which a Cinderella character meets a saturnine, handsome, rakish and cynical aristocrat who is reformed by her virtue. And unlike her predecessors, Cartland was a sentimental romantic so that even her most disreputable characters are capable of true love.
Cartland’s books suffer from the speed with which they were written. They are short, their plots weakly structured and the characters undeveloped. However, Cartland’s conviction, her sincerity and her romanticism keeps her readership loyal.
Between them, these three authors have contributed the building blocks for a Romantic sub-genre that has become so popular it boasts several imprints of its own.
The Regency Romance is today a hugely popular genre with a loyal readership that, we are told, enjoys ‘the romp’. There are now hundreds of Regency titles and even imprints devoted entirely to Regency Romance. And the greatest irony is that this very English subject has become a predominantly American genre.
These days, the genre falls into two main categories: the traditional ‘Regency’ where sex beyond a kiss and a grope outside of marriage is taboo, and the ‘Regency period historical’ which is usually longer and features more, and more explicit, sex. Apparently, most modern traditional Regency romances tend to keep to the ‘sure fire plot in which a spirited heroine captures a rakish hero in an aristocratic setting,’ and are supposed to feature ‘witty repartee’.
To examine what has become of the Regency Romance, I decided to choose a few of these titles at random from my local library shelves, each from different publishers. In deference to my delicate sensibilities I tried the ‘traditional’ Regency first.
As I had never read a Barbara Cartland, I decided to include at least one of her novels in this survey and I found the best thing about it was its title, The Prude and the Prodigal. First published in 1980, it tells the tale of a dark and handsome enigmatic hero who returns to his impoverished family estate after fourteen years to find that it has been managed since his father’s death by the heroine, a virtuous young woman. Meanwhile, the heroine’s younger sister has fallen in love with a handsome fortune hunter, who happens to be the hero’s nephew. The heroine tries to enlist the hero’s help to get rid of the fortune hunter, but it turns out the young man is truly in love and his uncle lets him elope with the younger sister while he carries off and marries the elder.
Barbara Cartland boasted of being able to write a book in seven days, and it shows. The novel is written mainly in summary narrative with an almost stream of consciousness structure where snippets of the back story, which at times seems much more interesting than the main story, are thrown in at random. Although coy about sex, Cartland describes each kiss at great emotional length, and the heroine’s breathless dialogue is punctuated by so many ellipses it reads like the poor girl is suffering from severe emphysema.
The Loves of Lord Granton is by Marion Chesney, who, we are told by the Romantic Times, is ‘the best Regency series writer’. Originally published in the US by Fawcett in 1997, it is the tale of a dark and handsome bored aristocrat who accepts an invitation to a country estate where he is expected to propose to the daughter of the house. Instead he takes to having secret meetings with the intelligent but neglected youngest daughter of the local rector, and causes consternation all round when he proposes to her.
Although the story is quite sweet, I can only call the style pedestrian at best, and, unfortunately for a romance writer, Chesney just can’t do love scenes. I doubt that the required response from a reader is ‘Ooh, yuk!’
The Cat’s Bracelet by Jessie Watson is a Zebra Regency Romance published in 1998. Two young country widows, Lillie, rich and on her way to her first London season, Belle, poor and on her way to a job as a lady’s companion, meet and decide to exchange places so that Lillie can go to Italy while Belle takes her place in Lillie’s London house. While there, Belle is to look for a centuries-old bracelet which has been kept hidden by generations of domestic cats. However, they didn’t take into account the arrival in London of Lillie’s dark and handsome cousin. I’ll let you guess the rest.
The writing style is banal, and if I had been Watson’s editor I would have sent her home to do a second draft with instructions to watch the point-of-view, give the love story a little bit of sexual tension, and lose the cat. (Being by far the most interesting character, it tended to upstage the humans.) However, one suspects that second drafts are a luxury that the romance production-line cannot afford.
A Bargain with Fate by Ann Elizabeth Cree was published by Harlequin in 2001. A pretty young widow from the country agrees to contract a bogus betrothal with a dark and handsome enigmatic aristocrat. He wants to fend off an unwanted wife, and she to regain the family estate her younger brother gambled away. Matters come to a head when the heroine is abducted by the hero’s spurned mistress in league with his sworn enemy.
I must admit I found the novel ‘unobjectionable’ as Jane Austen would say and pleasant reading. The writing was competent, the characters attractive, the plot, although clichéd, well handled, and, while passionate, the sex was kept within the bounds of taste and propriety.
I think we can gather from this random sample of the ‘traditional’ Regency, that this genre actually owes much more to Barbara Cartland than it does to Georgette Heyer. Their repetitive, slender plots all seem to feature a dark, handsome, enigmatic hero who, despite a colourful past, decides to marry an innocent country girl who is often young enough to be his daughter. What exactly should we make of this pursuit of innocence? If a modern immigrant goes back to his home village to marry an innocent virgin we are concerned for her welfare, but if an English aristocrat does, it’s supposed to be terribly romantic. If we were to revisit some of these couples one or two years later we would be sure to see the husbands farewelling their young wives to make frequent trips to London on ‘business.’
One also asks oneself, why are these heroes so ‘enigmatic’? We are very rarely given any back story to explain it, and once the romance starts they turn out to be rather prosaic. And how did all these dark and handsome heroes emerge from an Anglo-Saxon aristocracy? The shipwrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada must have really got around! The only practicable answer to these questions seems to be ‘because it’s what the genre requires’.
As for the heroines, this insistence on quiet and innocent country girls rather precludes the ‘spirited’ heroine we expect to find, and I saw little evidence of ‘witty repartee.’ There seems to be a trend in these ‘traditional’ Regencies for the heroine to become a young widow, rather than a virgin. I expect that is to allow a little more sexual activity without necessarily offending the proprieties. However bland the outcome, it seems that this type of Regency at least attempts to keep to the spirit and sexual mores of the period.
As for the quality of the writing, my greatest amusement while reading these novels was to consider how much better they could have been and rewrite them in my head. Although not as prolific as Barbara Cartland, most of these writers churn out dozens, if not hundreds of titles for a voracious, but obviously, uncritical audience. They cannot possibly take the time to polish each one. Unfortunately, it’s very much a case of ‘don’t mind the quality, feel the width.’
The second type of Regency Romance is the Regency ‘historical’ which is usually longer than the ‘traditional’ Regency and features more, and more explicit sex. Avon, for example, proclaims that it publishes ‘deliciously romantic historical novels…filled with… promise…and passion.’ We are also told, however, that these novels ‘forage among all the facts and fallacies of the day, exposing the underbelly of society while exploring the personal lives of the men and women of that time.’
I had meant to read a few of these for your edification. I even took a few out of the library and attempted to read one, but I just couldn’t go through with it. You will understand why when I tell you about the one I did suffer through, and which launched me on this quest, Lady Whistledown Strikes Back.
This anthology of four novellas by four best selling authors was published by Avon Romance in 2004. All four stories are set in 1816 and feature the same group of characters, with each one focussing on a particular couple.
Representing four such successful authors writing for one of the world’s biggest imprints, it should serve as a good example of the Regency romance today. From it we can learn what the Avon editors mean by ‘historical’, ‘romantic’ and ‘passion.’
In The First Kiss by Julia Quinn, our hero is a square jawed army officer who falls in love with the sister of a fallen comrade. (The heroine describes him as ‘dangerous’ when she first sees him, but this is not borne out by his conventional values.) He fears that he can never marry her because he is too poor, but the heroine’s aristocratic father consents the first time he asks. In the middle of the night the hero goes around to the heroine’s house to tell her the good news and, being too honourable to take her virginity, performs oral sex on her in the salon.
(My friend says that I should be forgiving of the cardboard thin plots because of the restrictions of the novella format, but surely 20–25,000 words is an ample number to allow for more than bogus cause with little effect. There always seem to be more than enough words for the sex scenes!)
In The Last Temptation by Mia Ryan, our hero is an aristocratic rogue (or so we are told, except that he is immediately protective towards the heroine). He meets a noblewoman’s spinster companion on the verge of turning thirty whose one ambition is to be kissed before her birthday. Finding her straightforward behaviour intriguing, he is soon able to overcome his life-long resistance to marriage and pops the question. They seal their engagement by sneaking off into the bushes for a quickie up against a tree. (Oh, in the meantime, the heroine has set herself up in the party planning business!)
In The Best of Both Worlds by Suzanne Enoch, a new earl goes to London to find a wife, but comes up against the resistance of his chosen one’s overprotective parents. Overcome by passion, he organises a tryst where he has no scruples about taking his ladylove’s virginity. They are finally allowed to marry when the heroine kisses her lover in public and announces their engagement, thus forcing her parents to pretend they have already sanctioned it.
In The Only One for Me by Karen Hawkins, an errant earl returns to London to the wife he left after a silly misunderstanding several years earlier, hoping to re-ignite the passion they once shared. (His return is prompted by her request for a divorce, the difficulty of obtaining one at the period being deftly avoided.) After a rather feeble resistance, his independently minded wife succumbs to her re-awakened passion. Their torrid reconciliation involves the application of raspberries and crème. (I’ll leave you to imagine how.)
Perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life, but I couldn’t believe what I was reading! There was nothing remotely historical about this book! The historical setting seemed to be there just to make the sex a little bit more titillating.
Is this what is meant by ‘forag[ing] among all the facts and fallacies of the day’? What facts? These authors wouldn’t know a fact if they fell over one. There is more to historical authenticity than getting the date of the Battle of Waterloo correct. What about the way people thought and acted? And as for fallacies: Gosh, why were those poor ignorant people in 1816 so worried about sex outside of marriage? Didn’t they know about the pill?
And to think that Julia Quinn is being touted by her publishers as ‘our contemporary Jane Austen.’ Talk about taking the poor woman’s name in vain!
These stories are written in modern American English and peopled by modern Americans, with a modern American’s language, mindset and sexual morals, albeit without recourse to a mobile phone. It’s as though they are contemporary participants in a reality TV show like Regency House-party, but with even fewer restrictions.
The characters might pay lip service to the conventions of the day, but they flout these very conventions with little hesitation and absolutely no consequences. As far as these writers are concerned, the social morals and strictures of the day are only there to string out the action a little. The Regency for them is just a time when the girls wore nice clothes, the men were rich and idle and people said things like ‘Egad’. Any reader with the slightest knowledge of history just cringes.
And as for romance and passion, they confuse superficial attraction for romance and unrestricted (and generally tasteless) sex for passion! They miss the point entirely.
As you can tell, I was rather disappointed with my findings on this quest. The Regency Romance which started out with such high ideals has become undemanding fodder for jaded readers with no real knowledge or respect for the historical realities. The English Regency has become a mythical period and place where romance writers can set up a few more obstacles than can be called on in a contemporary setting, then leap over them in one half-hearted bound! They recycle the one tired plot and cast of characters, spare little effort on the writing and produce offerings that are either banal or tasteless. These novels are a sad, but typical, example of what the category romance industry can do to a once great genre.