HISTORICAL FICTION

This list is in progress. Additions, comments and reviews welcome. E-mail here.

ANCIENT

PREHISTORIC

William Golding

• The Inheritors (Neanderthal)

Jean Auel

• Clan of the Cave Bear
• Valley of Horses
• Mammoth Hunters
• Plains of Passage
• Shelters of Stone

GREECE

Mary Renault

• The King Must Die
• The Bull from the Sea
• The Last of the Wine
• The Mask of Apollo
• Alexander Trilogy: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, Funeral Games

ROME & ITS EMPIRE

Robert Graves

• I Claudius
• Claudius the God

Conn Iggulden

• Emperor series (Julius Caesar)

Rosemary Sutcliff

• Eagle of the Ninth
• Lantern Bearers
• Silver Branch
• Mark of the Horse Lord

Robert Harris

• Pompeii
• Imperium

Alfred Duggan

• Winter Quarters
• Three's Company

Numerous whodunnits set in Rome

BIBLICAL

Anita Diamant

• Red Tent

OTHER

Naomi Mitchison

• The Corn King and the Spring Queen

DARK & MIDDLE AGES

Rosemary Sutcliff

• Sun Horse, Moon Horse (Iron Age Britain)
• Beowulf, Dragon Slayer

Manda Scott - Boudica Quartet

• Dreaming the Eagle
• Dreaming the Bull
• Dreaming the Hound
• Serpent Spear

Tim Severin

• Odinn's Child
• Sworn Brother
• King's Man

Bernard Cornwall

• Warlord Chronicles - Arthurian Britain: The Winter King, Enemy of God, Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur
• Saxon Stories - Alfred the Great: The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, The Lords of the North

MEDIAEVAL

Umberto Eco

• Name of the Rose
• Baudolino

Zoe Oldenbourg

• The World is Not Enough
• The Cornerstone
• Destiny of Fire - The novels are generally about the Crusades, but the third deals specifically with the Albigensian Crusade.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

• The Corner that Held Them (convent life)

William Golding

• The Spire

Margaret Elphinstone

• Islanders (Fair Isle)

Ken Follett

• Pillars of the Earth

Sir Walter Scott

• Ivanhoe

T H White

• Once and Future King, esp. Sword in the Stone

Victor Hugo

• Hunchback of Notre Dame

Alexandre Dumas

• Queen Margot

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• The White Company
• Sir Nigel

Barry Unsworth

• Morality Play (14C)
• Ruby in her Navel (12C Sicily)

Amin Maalouf

• Samarkand (Omar Khayyam in 10th-century Persia)

Tariq Ali

• A Sultan in Palermo (12th-century Sicily dominated by Arab culture and language)

Alfred Duggan

• Lady for Ransome (11th-century Constantinople)
• Lord Geoffrey's Fancy (13th-century chivalry)

Kate Mosse

• Labyrinth (13C Carcassonne and present)

RENAISSANCE ONWARDS

16TH CENTURY

Margaret Irwin

• Young Bess
• Elizabeth Captive Princess

Philippa Gregory

• Virgin's Lover
• Queen's Fool
• Other Boleyn Girl
• Constant Princess
• Boleyn Inheritance

Orhan Pamuk

• My Name is Red

Amin Maalouf

• Leo the African (the story of a 16th-century Muslim traveller writer from Granada - Hassan Al Wazzan)

Tariq Ali

• Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (the final conquest of Granada)

17TH CENTURY

Rose Tremain

• Restoration
• Music and Silence (Denmark)

Geraldine Brooks

• Year of Wonders (A novel of the Plague)

Alexandre Dumas

• The Three Musketeers

Tracy Chevalier

• Girl with a Pearl Earring

Ivo Andric

• Bridge Over the Drina (and the following centuries)

18TH CENTURY

Charles Dickens

• A Tale of Two Cities

R L Stevenson

• Kidnapped

J Meade Falkner

• Moonfleet

C S Forester

• Hornblower series (18th-19th century)

Barry Unsworth

• Sacred Hunger (slave ship)

19TH CENTURY

Where to start? And in addition there are all the Victorian novelists - Dickens, Eliot, Thackeray - writing about their own times or those in the near past.

Leo Tolstoy

• War and Peace

William Golding

• Rites of Passage
• Close Quarters
• Fire Down Below

Rose Tremain

• The Colour

Charles Frazier

• Cold Mountain

Matthew Kneale

• English Passengers

Arthur Morrison

• A Child of the Jago

Amitav Ghosh

• Glass Palace (Burma)

Vikram Chandra

• Red Earth and Pouring Rain (India) (In part historical - it whizzes around)

Toni Morrisom

• Beloved

George Macdonald Fraser

• Flashman series

Bernard Cornwell

• Sharpe series - Napoleonic Wars

20TH CENTURY

There are just too many to list! If you want ideas for a particular period, please ask.