The Witch, the Puritan and the Prophet: Historical Novels and Seventeenth-Century History

Abstract

In the historical fiction of the last two or three decades, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to be a particularly favoured period, providing the setting for a wide range of both literary and genre novels. The starting point for this chapter is curiosity about why that should be so. For me, as a historian of the seventeenth century, the interaction between fictional and historical versions of this period is of particular interest: how do the political and cultural concerns of the present shape this fictional past? This chapter offers some thoughts about that question, by way of a discussion of some aspects of recent historical fiction about early modern England.1 The discussion is inevitably a speculative and general one; in focusing on a few issues, there is much about historical novels in general and these novels in particular that will be left aside. But to explore the choice of specific historical moments or events in historical fiction offers an opportunity to examine in more detail the truism that historical novels are always about the present, the time of writing, as well as the past; and I hope here at least to raise some questions about history, story and the relations between them.2 KeywordsSeventeenth CenturyWoman WriterHistorical VersionLunatic AsylumHistorical FictionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.