Historical Fiction Tip

Recently, I completed my first historical fiction novel set in Regency England. Modeled on Jane Austen’s novels, I wanted to make sure my setting and plot were realistic, so I turned to reading actual novels from the time period between around 1790 and 1815. Unfortunately, Jane Austen only published 6 novels. While I got a pretty accurate picture of life during those years, the bulk of rounding out my education came from reading novels written by other authors during that time period. Fascinatingly enough, most of these were also written by women.

This is a great way to do research for your own historical fiction novel, as well as enjoy some classics that you won’t find on most bookshelves. Of course, it’s also pretty sad that most of these aren’t even available in a decent print edition. You can read a lot of them free online, but for old-schoolers like myself, who want a good, solid book in our hands, if we’re lucky, we might find a poorly laid out print-on-demand copy on Amazon with no page numbers and shoddy printing.

I’m tempted to write to some of the big publishing companies and ask if they will release them in nicer paperback editions, maybe call it “The Regency Collection” or something like that. In my next post, I’m considering describing a few of them to help historical fiction writers who specialize in Regency England. I’m not an expert, but reading actual novels written in that time period is a big help for pinpointing accuracy.