First I want to formally introduce our newest tag at Dear Author: mistorical. Now tags don’t generally get such an officious welcome, but this one, in particular, might be a wee bit controversial, as it means, quite literally, “mistaken historical.” In other words, it’s the tag we’re now going to be using to describe all manner of historically inauthentic and inaccurate books on the blog – a catchall term that can be used for books of any time period or any type of mistaken, misused, mythologized, missing, or otherwise inaccurately portrayed historicism.

Why have such a tag? Because for many readers (myself included), the historical authenticity and accuracy of a book labeled “Historical Romance” is an important element of its construction. This was certainly the case in DA January’s review of Phoenix Sullivan’s Spoil of War, in which the author explicitly defended the historical representations of her book:

As an indie author (or whatever term will eventually come to define us) by choice and a content editor by trade, I absolutely own any copyediting errors in the book. However, the two specifically pointed out are not errors. “Fagging courage” is correct; one of the definitions of the verb fag is to weary or exhaust. And “prob” is more akin to “pushing futiley at” than the word “probe” is. I’m happy to review comma errors that may have been made — with the understanding that commas can be a rather “gray” area when it comes to style and pacing.

I’m also not here to go point by point through the research, but I will mention that “Ryan” is the anglicized version of the many variants of a name that is ancient Gaelic in origin (Rian, Rion, Riain, etc), much like the name Arthur itself is an anglicized version of any of several variants from Roman or Welsh origin.

The question of historicity dogged the comment thread, with Maili responding to Sullivan’s defense of Ryan:

Rían, Ríon and Ríain aren’t variants of one name nor do they have anything in common, except for one thing–this prefix: rí.

‘Rí’ on its own does mean ‘king’ (or in contemporary sense, ruler), but it doesn’t mean it’s just that when used as a prefix. Please, Irish – certainly old Irish – is a lot more complex than that. As a prefix, it implies anything that suggests high position or influence.

As it stands, there is nothing so far that can confirm the meaning of Ryan is ‘little king’. Four reasons: a) the supposed etymology of Ryan/little king doesn’t fit in with the traditional Irish naming system – same with the (Scottish) Gaelic naming system, b) some say that in Irish, it’s grammatically incorrect, c) it doesn’t fit geographically, and d) every intensive search so far had failed to make a solid connection between Ryan and ‘little king’ and/or ‘Rí’. Any decent Irish or Gaelic name etymologist can and will tell you all this.

As Sunita and Dhympna, a medieval historian, have detailed, the historical representations in the book are anything but historically sound, which cuts quite harshly against the author’s own defense of the book on those grounds.

Which raises the question of what the uses and limits of history are in fiction, and especially in the way readers evaluate fictional stories that depend, in their worldbuilding, on recognizable moments from the past.

Anyone who has conversed with me for longer than two minutes knows I’m pretty enthusiastically adamant that “historical Romance” should take history seriously, and that books we describe as wallpaper or historically inspired, or historical fantasy, or the like should have another label. Because as Dhympna’s analysis of Sullivan’s Spoil of War demonstrates, historical accuracy, even in a book set in the 5^th century, is hardly impossible. Further, a sense of historical authenticity — that is, the larger atmospheric context that makes the world building believable — is obtainable for an era in which we have a decent amount of historical data and analysis available. And this may be naïve of me, but any time I hear an author say something like “I love history,” or “I love researching history,” or “I think historical research is so fascinating,” that raises my expectation for the historicity of their book. Because, like Sullivan’s defense of her novel, I read that as a kind of credentialing, albeit more casual than the inclusion of an author’s note or footnotes or bibliography or the like.

All that said, I do not think that historicity can save a bad story (and again, see Sunita’s review of Spoil of War for an example of this), or that its lack can ruin a masterful one. An example of the latter can be found in the long discussion pursuant to my review of Julie Anne Long’s What I Did For A Duke. Each reader determines what constitutes a masterful story, however, and readers can, indeed, be fatally distracted by what we perceive to be too many errors, historical or otherwise. By the same token, we can be mistaken about what is and isn’t accurate or authentic in a book, creating frustration for authors and indirectly, perhaps, perpetuating inauthentic but widely accepted elements.

One of the more perplexing issues for me around historical accuracy, though, is exemplified by the nature of the Regency Romance and the extent to which accuracy seems to be partially defined by genre progenitors like Jane Austen or foremothers like Georgette Heyer. In fact, the extent to which books like Heyer’s are now viewed as historical sources themselves demonstrates how muddy the concept of “historical accuracy” can be for a period like the Regency, which has much more significance and endurance in the genre than it does generally. As Maili pointed out on Twitter recently, much of the historical critique of Regency Romance deals with cultural and social faux pas rather than larger political or economic issues. It almost seems as if there’s a specific type of history readers of Regency Romance expect from the subgenre. I often feel confused by discussions about Regency accuracy, because I’m not well-versed in Heyer, and I don’t read Austen as genre Romance. So my question, as someone who does not have expert knowledge of the Regency, is how much of that alleged accuracy is derived from Heyer and Austen, and how much from a thorough knowledge of general historical sources?

One particular difficulty with Heyer seems to be the extent to which the author herself has become an icon and a beacon, which was very much in evidence throughout the Smart Bitches thread on The Grand Sophy, with author Anne Stuart objecting to Sarah’s frustration with the book’s stereotypical slur on “Jewish moneylenders:”

I saw the grade and thought, are you fucking crazy?  In general I glaze over racism etc. in older books (and remember, this book is 61 years old, came out before GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (the first major movie to tackle anti-semitism).

Then again, I adore Heyer so much that I simply ignore the appalling classism (the adopted son in THESE OLD SHADES—horrors!) etc.  Either you adore Heyer or you don’t.

However, I am sorry that it was personally painful.  I do think 1950 was long enough in the past to overlook the casual racism.

Given the contrast in tone between discussion of Phoenix Sullivan’s book and Heyer’s Grand Sophy, the question of historicity is pointed: how much does “real” history count, and does the author’s own history count? One author intercepts discussion of the book to defend her own research credentials against claims of offensive characterization, while in another context readers use “historical accuracy” to defend an offensive characterization. Sullivan goes so far as to suggest that readers who disagree with her portrayals in Spoil of War “demand anachronistic thinking from characters.” Which seems to be similar to what some readers are saying about those who take issue with the portrayal of Jewish characters in Heyer’s novels.

So what’s the difference? Is there a difference?

I think there’s a crucial difference, but will leave it to others to measure the validity of my distinction: In one instance, readers are being asked to accept the alleged historical accuracy of an author’s portrayal, offensive or not. In the other instance, readers are being asked to dismiss aspects of a portrayal that may or may not be historically accurate (or if accurate, certainly not universal). It’s especially ironic when you consider the fact that Heyer’s portrayal is probably more accurately reflective of both her time and the time of her books.

And yet the sheer depth and breadth of reader investment in Heyer’s books adds another layer to the dilemma of historicism, because in some cases it seems Heyer is not only being invoked as an author, but as a historical authority herself, for her own books and those derived from her body of work. Heyer seems to be both source and author, which shapes not only what is seen as “true” in her books and those influenced by her work, but also what is deemed appropriate in terms of reader response. That is, it seems that Heyer’s influence is influencing not only what we read in Regency Romance, but how we should be reading it, as well. Which for me diverges substantially from the notion and relevance of historical accuracy in the Romance genre as a whole.

So what if we remove the author from the analysis? At this point, is that even possible, especially with Regency Romance? And if it’s possible, will it make it easier or harder to assess the historical validity of a story?

Related posts:

1. Past is Prologue, A Brief Look at History of Romance Communities on the Internet
2. Query No. “Repeating History”
3. The Limits of an Open Reader Standard

Since my review of Bonnie Dee‘s m/m historical romance Jungle Heat, there has been considerable discussion in Romancelandia about historical accuracy. The ones I noticed were at Katiebabs’ blog, Kalen Hughes at History Hoydens, and Courtney Milan’s blog. I thought the conversations were interesting specifically in light of writing and reading historical gay romance. So, today we have my opinion piece on why (and what type of) historical accuracy matters *to me* in m/m romance specifically. And tomorrow we’ve got interviews by some of the leading m/m historical romance authors, to see what they have to say about the issue.

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First off: I do not want perfect historical accuracy in my historical romances. I care very little about the historical provenance of champagne flutes and while the wrong underwear might make me roll my eyes, it won't stop me from reading unless it's a symptom of a much larger problem with historical inaccuracies. Although I love accurate historical detail, if something has to give to serve the story, that's fine and I get it, really.

But romances to me are about the way people THINK and that is as historically contingent as how they dress.

Case in point: I'm a scholar of eighteenth-century literature, and specifically of the Romantic-era novel (end of the eighteenth century), because that was the century that people most started thinking like we do nowadays about love and marriage and class and, in small part, race, but also about freedom and democracy and civil rights. And I love that time of change. I love figuring out WHY people started thinking that way and how they got to that point. The eighteenth century is the century that produced the US Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the abolitionist movement, proto-feminism, and the primacy of companionate marriage. Before the eighteenth century, people literally did not think like we do about their own identity, their relationships with others, or their society. Traveling back in time to before the eighteenth century, even in Europe, would be like someone who has never traveled beyond rural Arkansas going to urban Japan. This is why I don't read medieval romance (except Laura Kinsale's For My Lady's Heart). Because it's almost impossible to get the way they THINK right in a way that would make SENSE to a modern reader. Medieval Europe was as foreign a country to the modern USA (or Europe) as the hunter-gatherer desert Khoi San culture is, or deeply religious Saudi Arabia.

More particularly: starting with the Renaissance but culminating in the Enlightenment philosophies of the 18th century, the way people thought about their status and worth as individuals changed in ways that would be unrecognizable to pre-Renaissance people. These Enlightenment philosophies privileged the individual over the institution (most obviously, the individual over the Church) and reason over dogma (ditto for the Church). Only the 18th century could have made the idea of marrying for love the dominant narrative. For reasons both social (rise of middle class, literacy, leisure time, disposable income) and technological (paper, printing, book binding), only the 18th century could have invented and popularized the novel. And, most importantly, only the 18th Century could have focused that novel on the feminine and the domestic, on the ways in which two people negotiate their love, form a relationship, and become the ideal social unit. We think about love and relationships the way we do today because of the 18th century and, in unavoidably connected ways, we read the romance novels we read today because of the 18th century roots of the novel.

This all goes double for the way homosexuality has been viewed in Western culture through the centuries. That very word, “homosexuality,” as we understand it nowadays as an identity, would be a historical anachronism anytime before the 20th century, some might even say anytime before the middle of the 20th century, depending on how you read history. Our modern understanding of homosexuality as an identity, as something people ARE, rather than as a series of acts that people do, is less than a century old.

Which is not to say that you can't write a historical romance with characters who think about their sexuality as an identity. Alex Beecroft does an amazing job with that: her characters know that they're different, know that they're not attracted to the opposite sex, know that it's an integral part of who they are. But they don't think to themselves "I'm gay" or discuss their homosexuality with others. The closest they come is thinking that they’re “inverts” or “sodomites.” But, still, writing about a man in the eighteenth century, who is what we would now consider gay, fall in love with another man entails detailing how he comes to realize that he CAN fall in love with his sexual partner. And that type of historically-specific internal conflict can be fascinating to read and can show us exactly how far we’ve come in our societal understanding of homosexuality.

And isn’t that what it’s all about? Why bother writing historical m/m romance if you’re not going to show how far we’ve come as a society to accept two people–any two people–who love each other? Why bother writing historical m/m romance if you’re going to ignore how HUGE and BRAVE a mental and emotional leap it was for GLBT people to fall in love and to pursue that love, despite everything society told them about how wrong their actions were, but more importantly, how impossible their emotions were.

Absolute historical accuracy–whether we’re talking about things or thinking–is impossible, impractical, and even undesirable, because we are always writing and reading from our own historical moment. But if historical fiction is written (in part) to reflect our own feelings about a contentious issue at a potentially safer distance, as Courtney Milan suggests in her blog post, then surely the very fact that the way we think about homosexuality has changed so much over the past 200 years is precisely the point? Historical accuracy about precisely when someone could consider themselves to BE “a homosexual” (rather than just doing homosexual things) is therefore a vitally important political act. "Imagine how homosexuality will be viewed in another 100 years," historically accurate novels say, "if we have come so far in the past 100 years." More importantly, to have historical m/m romance claim the same narrative as m/f romance, a narrative that is inextricably intertwined in the political, social, and civil rights of the individual to choose their own destiny, makes writing m/m romance a political act, and writing accurate m/m historical romance vitally important.

But if we want to take it down from the political level back to the level of the story, back to the ROMANCE part of HISTORICAL ROMANCE (to use Kalen Hughes’ terminology), then for historical m/m romance in particular, the historical accuracy is of paramount importance to HOW the romance progresses. It’s not like an anachronistic champagne flute or a red silk nightie when only white cotton (linen?) was used. The historical accuracy of the way people thought about themselves, about love, about sex, about IF they could fall in love and WHO they could fall in love with, the etymology of the terminology they used to imagine their relationships, is vital to the progress of their relationship because the very WORDS we use define how we think and how we see and interact with our world. So why write m/m HISTORICAL romance if you’re not going to play around with that?
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Tomorrow we’ll have author interviews with Josh Lanyon, Charlie Cochrane, Lee Rowan, Erastes, and Alex Beecroft, and Kate Rothwell and Bonnie Dee. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. 2008 Golden Heart WINNER for Historical Romance
2. 2008 Golden Heart WINNER for Regency Historical Romance
3. REVIEW: Hero the Amazon: An Historical Romance by Sam Bonnamy

But to go truly mass-market, e-books will have to appeal to women, who tend to be warier of new technology and more price-conscious, Epps says.

Harlequin, purveyor of those lusty supermarket bodice-rippers, has dipped into the market with an e-book subscription service for some series, like Silhouette Desire, “delivering the provocative passion you crave.” And no one can see you put it in your shopping cart!

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GalleyCat asks the question of whether an author needs an agent in the future.   Meriam Goderich responds that any serious author needs a good agent.   I see agenting in the future as more of a business management position that will include hooking the author up with a good editor (maybe a contract editor) and providing publicity vehicles for authors.   Speaking of publicity, this Miami Herald article looks at all the publicity an author needs to do particularly if you are self published.

As the Miami Book Fair International gets underway, more than 400 authors have discovered they must be there to push their books, either by nailing a spot on a panel, hosting a session, or shaking as many hands as possible to get noticed. Of course, there’s the social media component, too. They must write on blogs, reach fans through Twitter, even make online and the usual in-person book club appearances.

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Macleans discusses historical fiction and whether it needs to be  faithful to historical fact by looking at the Booker prize winning novelist’s work which is very faithful against the Governor’s General Award nominee Kate Pullinger.   Pullinger says “Surely it is the role of all novelists to uncover the untold stories, the undocumented lives; surely this is a legitimate way to demonstrate and elucidate "historical truth’ (a concept that is itself notoriously unreliable).” Hilary Mantel, the Booker winner, has a different view, “"I stick with the facts until the facts run out. I don’t try to improve on them.”   It’s a fascinating difference, no?

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Kristie J has found another new romance blogger: Jessica at Book Bound.

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Did you know that Hachette sells digital books straight from its website? Me neither but this article in PW suggests that it does.   I went over there and clicked around and saw no ability to purchase ebooks on the site. What am I missing?

Related posts:

1. Wednesday Midday Links RoundUp: Big Changes at Simon & Schuster
2. Friday Midday News Roundup
3. Wednesday Midday Links: JA Konrath Posts a Must Read Article and Dear Author Has Neat News

1. All Scottish men are named Jamie. But that’s only if they’re not called Alistair.
2. All Scottish men wear kilts, even when they were outlawed and even when they didn’t exist. All clans have an identifying tartan.
3. All Scottish men carry claymores.
4. Everyone is a Highlander because the Highlands start right at the border between England and Scotland.
5. Half the country has red hair and half has black. Not brown, mind you but raven, midnight black. There are no fair haired lassies in Scotland.
6. Speaking of Lassies, all women are lassies. Wee lassies especially. Never mind that actually refers to young girls.
7. All Scottish men prefer English brides.
8. Every other man is a Laird.
9. They all say “didnae, cannae, willnae, wouldnae” with the emphasis on the “ae.”
10. Scottish men are always drunk on single malt whisky.
11. Haggis is served at every meal.
12. Everyone lives near a loch.
13. They all own sheep. Sometimes drunk on single malt whisky, full on haggis, wet from the loch, they mistake the sheep for wee lassies and take off their tartan to lay on the ground and . . . well, that scene wasn’t from a romance book.
14. At least once a day, Scottish men say “Och, wee Lassie, doonae ken my kilt?”

Of course, our list is tongue in cheek. We know that romance historicals often take license with history and the question is to what extent can authors do this and still be acceptable to readers. Let’s be real. The majority of the romance reading public do not hold history degrees. The majority of romance reading public will not know when a desk with a drawer was first made; how terribly wrong it is for a gentleman to remove his jacket in public during the Victorian period; that potatoes didn’t come to Europe until 1570.

For me, I am not going to let a historical inaccuracy get in the way of my enjoyment of a good story so long as the inaccuracy is not noticeable or does not detract from the overall world created by the author. I loved The Raven Prince and felt that I could overlook the unlikely possibility of a young gentlewoman serving as the secretary for a titled man in the Georgian period.

For others, the craft is the story and a fork appearing before forks existed will kill the mood of the entire book. If you can’t trust an author to get the fork right, what other specious goods is she trying to pass off? Some authors are personally affronted that others don’t put as much effort into ensuring that the book is historically accurate. The problem is that accuracy can sometimes be, well, subjective.

Readers don’t always know what is historically accurate. I’ve read individuals complain that an author is too modern. This is an accusation that was leveled often toward Connie Brockway whose historicals are keepers for me. I recall people picking on Julie Ann Long for her use of “alien” in Beauty and the Spy. Ms. Long, I believe, came along and defended the etymology of the word “alien”. Alien was first used as a synonym for foreigner in 1330. It wasn’t until the mid 1900s that alien was first attributed to meaning “of another planet.” The Raven Prince also suffered the accusation of too modern of a voice for some. The hero is described as demolishing his plate. Demolish is attributed to the 1500s French word, demoliss.

I am guilty of this. Recently I read a book set in the late 1800s in England that referred to New York York harbor on Independence Day (1885); werewolf (Old English); velvet lined handcuffs (pre 1900s). The book was historically accurate but because I have had a decade of reading almost soley Regency related romances, when I first started reading, I had to remind myself of the time period. The more immersed I became in the story, the less this became a concern.

I love those old time Susan Johnson books that included footnotes. I remember reading Forbidden featuring a female Native American attorney in Montana set in the late 1800s. I was skeptical that there was such a creature, but the footnotes sold me that this could have happened.

Fn. 1. Lyda Burton Conley, of Kansas City, was the first Native American woman lawyer in the United States. Admitted to the Kansas bar in 1910, she’d begun studying law in 1904 in order to represent herself and the Wyandotte tribe in a lawsuit against the United States government.

and

Fn. 2. In 1878, the House passed Bill No. 1077, which gave women attorneys access to the federal courts. After another year of buttonholing senators in the corridors of the Capitol, the “Lockwood” bill passed the Senate in 1879 after three years of extensive lobbying, and President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law.

In Arnette Lamb’s, The Betrothal, the historical detail added such richness to the story that I felt I was actually there. The heroine, Marjorie Entwhistle, was the postmistress of Bath when Blake Chesterfield came to claim her hand. Chesterfield has a terrible secret to which Marjorie’s father became privy. Chesterfield must convince Marjorie to marry him or Marjorie’s father will make the secret public, damning Chesterfield and his entire line. Lamb laid out in great detail the workings of the Post and how Marjorie came to be in control of it; how important that this was as it made money for her which she desperately needed to provide independence for herself. Hogarth’s work as a cartoonist and satirist played an integral role, firmly settling the book in the mid 1700s.

To further muddy the waters, history is recorded by the conquerors of a period and many details can be interpreted more than one way. In Joan Wolf’s Fool’s Masquerade, the hero is trying to explain to the heroine how wronged King Richard the Third was by history. King Richard did not, Diccon tells Valentine, dispose of the three princes in the tower.

The earl’s dark eyes were hard on my face. “. . . Richard the Third, Valentine, is the most bitterly wronged king in all of English history.”

I held his gaze. “I only know about him from Shakespeare.”

His mouth twisted. “You and everyone else. Crookback Richard, villain, usurper, murderer. And none of it is true.”

“What was Shakespeare’s source?” I asked. One thing I had learned from my father was to evaluate the bias of historical sources before coming to any conclusions.

Lord Leyburn looked at me speculatively. “The History of Richard III by Sir Thomas More.”

“Sir Thomas More?” I shook my head. “I don’t think one can call into question the integrity of a man like More, my lord.”

“Thomas More was brought up in the household of Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Morton was the right hand man of Henry the Seventh, the Tudor usurper who defeated Richard at Bosworth Field. Morton was also, and had been for years, Richard’s deadly enemy. There is no doubt that Morton is the one who supplied the information about Richard to his pupil, Thomas More. And the history was never published in More’s lifetime. It was found with his papers after his death. It was not finished. I’ve always thought that More, who was an extremely intelligent man, never finished it because he had begun to doubt the honesty and the value of the material supplied to him by Morton.”

This was all extremely interesting. “Are there no other sources?” I asked thoughtfully.

“Nothing chronological. There are, of course, Parliamentary records and decrees, personal letters from the time, the Patent Rolls, things like that.”

I want authors to get it right. I think that they should do the research and know the time period in which they write as well as a scholar of that period. Shouldn’t we readers be the allowed to learn as well as be entertained? The thing is, though, that even if we readers want writers to strive for more historical accuracy, we don’t want slavish devotion to accuracy (whatever that may be) to take the place of a good story.

Just because I have a law degree and can barely stomach reading contemporaries featuring lawyers because so many of authors portray legal proceedings incorrectly, I don’t think that Jayne is foolish or ignorant for enjoying a book like that. Similarly, a reader who doesn’t recognize the tricorn (Georgian) from the bicorn (Regency) from the derby (Victorian) isn’t a cretin either. I believe we readers we are looking for is to be swept away into the past, even if its a fantasy past, for just a few hours.

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