Historical Novel

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is

a novel that has as its setting a usually significant period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic details and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to historical fact. The work may deal with actual historical characters...or it may contain a mixture of fictional and historical characters.

Read more about Historical Novel:  Development, Style and Themes, Time Period, Subgenres, Connection To Nationalism, Authors of The Past, Authors of Late, Theory and Criticism

Famous quotes containing the word historical:

    By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.
    Owen Barfield (b. 1898)