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According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is

Development[link]

An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.^[2]

The historical novel was further popularized in the 19th century by writers classified as Romantics. Many regard Sir Walter Scott as the first to write historical novels. György Lukács, in his The Historical Novel, argues that Scott is the first fiction writer who saw history not just as a convenient frame in which to stage a contemporary narrative, but rather as a distinct social and cultural setting.^[3] His novels of Scottish history such as Waverley (1814) and Rob Roy (1817) focus upon a middling character who sits at the intersection of various social groups in order to explore the development of society through conflict.^[4] His Ivanhoe (1820) gains credit for renewing interest in the Middle Ages. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) furnishes another 19th century example of the romantic-historical novel as does Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. In the United States, James Fenimore Cooper was a prominent author of historical novels.^[5] In French literature, the most prominent inheritor of Scott's style of the historical novel was Balzac.^[6]

Though the genre has evolved since its inception, the historical novel remains popular with authors and readers to this day; bestsellers include Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series, Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, and Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. A striking development in British/Irish writing in the past 25 years has been the renewed interest in the First World War. Works include William Boyd's An Ice-Cream War; Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and The Girl at the Lion d'Or (concerned with the War's consequences); Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy and Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way.

Style and themes[link]

Many early historical novels played an important role in the rise of European popular interest in the history of the Middle Ages. Hugo's Hunchback often receives credit for fueling the movement to preserve the Gothic architecture of France, leading to the establishment of the Monuments historiques, the French governmental authority for historic preservation.

The genre of the historical novel has also permitted some authors, such as the Polish novelist Bolesław Prus in his sole historical novel, Pharaoh, to distance themselves from their own time and place to gain perspective on society and on the human condition, or to escape the depredations of the censor.

In some historical novels, major historic events take place mostly off-stage, while the fictional characters inhabit the world where those events occur. Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped recounts mostly private adventures set against the backdrop of the Jacobite troubles in Scotland. Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge is set amid the Gordon Riots, and A Tale of Two Cities in the French Revolution.

In some works, the accuracy of the historical elements has been questioned, as in Alexandre Dumas' Queen Margot. Postmodern novelists such as John Barth and Thomas Pynchon operate with even more freedom, mixing historical characters and settings with invented history and fantasy, as in the novels The Sot-Weed Factor and Mason & Dixon respectively. A few writers create historical fiction without fictional characters. One example is I, Claudius, by 20th century writer Robert Graves; another is the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough.

Time period[link]

Time scales in historical novels vary widely. While many focus on a particular event or series of events, writers like James A. Michener and Edward Rutherfurd employ generations of fictional characters to tell tales that stretch for hundreds or thousands of years. Others, like McCullough and Gore Vidal, compose a chronological series of linked novels.

Some writers postulate an alternative to accepted historical presumptions. In I, Claudius, by 20th century writer Robert Graves, the Roman Emperor Claudius, until then commonly regarded as inept by historians, is presented in a more sympathetic light. Mary Renault's novels of ancient Greece, such as The Last of the Wine, implied suggestions of tolerance for homosexuality. Gore Vidal's novels about American history, including Burr and 1876, included iconoclastic and cynical insights about the nature of political processes and American history. Historical fiction can also serve satirical purposes. An example is George MacDonald Fraser's tales of the dashing cad, poltroon, and bounder Sir Harry Paget Flashman.

Subgenres[link]

In the 20th century, historical novels started branching into different sub-genres.

Arthur Conan Doyle greatly influenced historical mysteries with his Sherlock Holmes series and several authors followed like Iain Pears, Paul C. Doherty and David Liss.

Romantic themes have also found their way in historical narrative i.e. historical romances, by mostly female authors, starting from the Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and others in 20th century like Eleanor Hibbert and Philippa Gregory.

Another popular trend is the nautical historical novels, which started with the pirate novels about Sandokan by Emilio Salgari and was further developed by novelist like C.S. Forester's Hornblower series and Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series, set in the back-drop of the Napoleonic Wars.

The science fiction genre also contains a couple of historical sub-genres; alternate history such as Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna, and time travel with historical settings, such as the "Company" stories of Kage Baker.

Connection to nationalism[link]

Historical fiction sometimes served to encourage movements of romantic nationalism. A series of novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski on the history of Poland popularized the country's history after it had lost its independence in the Partitions of Poland. Subsequently the Polish winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in literature, Henryk Sienkiewicz, wrote several immensely popular novels set in conflicts between the Poles and predatory Teutonic Knights, rebelling Cossacks and invading Swedes. (He also penned a once popular novel about Nero's Rome and the early Christians, Quo Vadis, which has been filmed several times.)

Scott's Waverley novels ignited interest in Scottish history and still illuminate it. Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter fulfilled a similar function for Norwegian history; Undset later won a Nobel Prize for Literature (1928).

Authors of the past[link]

• Stephen Crane
• Alfred Döblin
• Gustave Flaubert
• G. A. Henty
• Heinrich Mann
• James A. Michener
• Walter Scott
• Adalbert Stifter
• Rosemary Sutcliff
• Mika Waltari
• General Lew Wallace

Authors of Late[link]

• Ann Rinaldi, writing YA historical fiction (Time Enough For Drums, A Break with Charity). She writes usually with female protagonists in the first person, set in Colonial - Civil War era America or World War I era. Critically acclaimed and admired.
• Mark Turnbull, author of Decision Most Deadly, a novel set in London during 1641, as England plunged into civil war.
• Writing as "William Irish", Cornell Woolrich published Waltz into Darkness (1947), set in 1880 New Orleans. Interestingly, both film versions — François Truffaut's La sirène du Mississipi (Mississippi Mermaid, 1969) and Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) — place the action at a later time (and elsewhere).
• George Leonardos Author of historical Novels, such the trilogy for the Byzantine The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, "Mara, The Christian Sultana", the stepmother of Mehmed II the Conqueror, "Barbarossa the Pirate", "The Sleeping Beauty of Mystras etc.
• Borislav Pekic's novels are recognized as unusually deeply researched historical novels, taking place in Medieval and Early Modern Europe as well as several during WWII, most notably in his acclaimed, How to Quiet a Vampire. His 7 volume masterpiece, "The Golden Fleece" is a family saga through which European History is uniquely examined from its birth in Homeric Greece right up to Hitler's Third Reich.
• Linda Proud has been acclaimed for the depth of her research in recreating Renaissance Florence, particularly the philosophical currents that informed the work of Botticelli, in A Tabernacle for the Sun, Pallas and the Centaur and The Rebirth of Venus. http://www.lindaproud.com/
• Albert A. Bell, Jr. writes mysteries set in the Roman Empire with Pliny the younger as sleuth and Tacitus as sidekick. See All Roads Lead to Murder. http://www.albertbell.com/
• T.C. Boyle's The Road to Wellville (1993), set in 1907, tells the story of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of cornflakes, and his Battle Creek Sanitarium.
• Colleen McCullough has written the famous Masters of Rome series, which deals with the end of the great Roman Republic and great personalities like Caesar, Gaius Marius and Sulla.
• John Jakes has written the best-selling North and South Trilogy on the life and times of members of two families during the American Civil war and also The Kent Family Chronicles.
• Gillian Bradshaw, a classical scholar, writes historical fiction set in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Duchy of Brittany, the Byzantine Empire, Saka and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Imperial Rome, Sub-Roman Britain and Roman Britain.
• Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day (1989), set in 1956, explains in flashbacks the dubious history of (fictitious) 1930s Darlington Hall and its association with Nazi Germany.
• Patrick Redmond's The Wishing Game (1999) provides a thrilling depiction of life in a strict and uncanny boarding school in 1950s rural Norfolk, England.
• Julie Myerson's novel Laura Blundy (2000) is set in Victorian London.
• Bernard Cornwell is one of today's best-known historical novelists, with his Sharpe and The Warlord Chronicles.
• Conn Iggulden is also a well known historical-fiction author of the widely acclaimed Emperor series, The Conqueror series and the Dangerous Book for Boys, although it should be noted that the Emperor series is best known for its gross historical inaccuracies.
• Jonathan Coe's novel The Rotters' Club (2001) evokes 1970s Britain.
• Cecelia Holland has written over twenty novels set in various parts of Europe, Asia and the United States in many periods.
• The bulk of Gore Vidal's novels have historical settings, including Burr, which has gained a wider readership than any biography of Aaron Burr.
• Neal Stephenson's series The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), published in 2003 and 2004, deals with the rise of the scientific worldview and the beginnings of modern capitalism in late 17th and early 18th century Europe. Cryptonomicron is set in World War II.
• Iain Pears is the author of several historical novels, including An Instance of the Fingerpost and Stone's Fall.
• The James Reasoner Civil War Series is a 10-volume set of historical novels set in Culpeper, Virginia.
• Amita Kanekar's A Spoke in the Wheel is a novel about the Buddha and his disciples, that alternates between the time of the Buddha, i.e. about 566 BCE, and the time of Ashoka the Great, i.e. about 250 BCE.
• Marianne Curley. Her books Old Magic and the Guardians of Time Trilogy all take place partially in the past.
• Umberto Eco's novels, most notably his most famous, The Name of the Rose, are historical novels, taking place in Medieval or Early Modern Europe.
• Marie-Elena John is a Caribbean writer whose debut novel Unburnable gives a slice of social history of the Caribbean, focusing on the African origins of Caribbean culture.
• Arturo Pérez-Reverte is the Spanish author of the Captain Alatriste novels and other historical novels.
• Robert Harris has written four historical novels so far: Enigma, which is set during World War II As well as Pompeii, Imperium and Lustrum, which are set in Ancient Rome.
• Courtney Thomas's Walls of Phantoms accurately documents the daily news events of 1989 - including providing the historical framework of what lead to these events - in this meticulously wrought epic.
• Anurag Kumar's Recalcitrance, set in the Great Uprising or Indian Mutiny of 1857
• Michael Goodspeed's Three to a Loaf, a carefully researched and highly readable Canadian spy novel illustrates the societies as well as the lives and attitudes of Allied and German soldiers locked in the cauldron of the Western Front.
• Thomas Pynchon's three novels Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon and Against the Day are historical, and they variously contrast outrageous personal, subjective, hallucinogenic or even supernatural events with very real, well-researched accuracies from the past.
• Tim Powers's novels, or many of them, for example Declare, are meticulously researched historical novels that slip supernatural elements into aspects of the history.
• S.J.A.Turney's 2009 debut, Marius' Mules, based on Julius Caesar's invasion of Gaul, viewed from the perspective of a Legionary commander, along with the 2010 sequel following the campaign against the Belgae.
• Rimi B. Chatterjee, set her second novel The City of Love in 16th century Malaysia, Burma and Bengal and dealt with spice traders, pirates, tantrics and sufis. Parts of her third novel Black Light are set in the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE and the 7th century and the early 20th century CE.
• Nerea Riesco set her second novel Ars Magica in Spain's early 17th century.
• Richard Zimler has an award-winning series of novels about different generations of a Portuguese-Jewish family of manuscript illuminators and kabbalists. The books are entitled The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (16th-century Lisbon), Hunting Midnight (19th century Porto and Charleston, South Carolina), Guardian of the Dawn (17th-century Goa) and The Seventh Gate (Berlin in the 1930s). He has also written an historical mystery set in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940-41 entitled The Warsaw Anagrams. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "This mystery set in the most infamous Jewish ghetto of World War II deserves a place among the most important works of Holocaust literature."
• Julian Stockwin has an internationally acclaimed series tracing one man's journey from pressed man to Admiral in the Age of Fighting Sail.
• Michael Cawood Green's historical fiction about the Trappist mission at Mariannhill, "For the Sake of Silence" has been awarded the 2009 Olive Schreiner prize by the English Academy of South Africa. His academic monograph "Novel Histories" is an exploration of the uses of history in fiction.
• Bevis Longstreth wrote two novels set in the Ancient Middle East, Spindle and Bow (2005), and Return of the Shade (2009), which tells the story of Queen Parysatis (444BC to 384BC) who ruled Ancient Persia.
• Jack Whyte wrote A Dream of Eagles during the 1990s and 2000s. Dream of Eagles is a set of novels about the rise of Camelot after the Roman departure from Britain in the late 4th/early 5th century. Whyte also wrote The Templar Trilogy, a set of novels that discusses the foundation, rise, and fall of the Knights Templar
• Phil Ward, an American Vietnam veteran, is the author of the meticulously researched Raiding Forces Series which is set during the Second World War in Europe.
• A.F. Eleazar, wrote the Kalangitan, set in 1400 A.D a Filipino writer who also creates Matteok Series. He creates various Historical Fictions.
• Philippa Gregory wrote more than ten historical novels set in England, including The Other Boleyn Girl
• K M Warwick wrote 'Not Just a Whore', the story of one of London's most successful and wealthy madams and the illegitimate daughter of the Bishop of London.
• Luther Blissett wrote Q (1999), set in 15th century Europe during the Protestant reformation and German Peasants' War

Theory and criticism[link]

The Marxist literary critic, essayist, and social theorist György Lukács wrote extensively on the aesthetic and political significance of the historical novel. In 1937's Der historische Roman, published originally in Russian, Lukács developed critical readings of several historical novels by authors including Keller, Dickens, and Flaubert. For him, the advent of the "genuinely" historical novel at the beginning of the 19th century is to be read in terms of two developments, or processes. First, the development of a specific genre in a specific medium: the development of the historical novel's unique stylistic and narrative elements. Secondly, the development of a representative, organic artwork capable of capturing the fractures, contradictions, and problems of the particular productive mode of its time [i.e. developing, early, entrenched capitalism].

See also[link]

• Georg Lukács
• Historical fiction
• List of historical novelists
• List of historical novels
• Historical whodunnit
• Historical romance
• Family saga
• Middle Ages in history
• Alternate history
• Historical fantasy
• Walter Scott Prize

References[link]

Works cited[link]

• de Groot, Jerome (2010). The Historical Novel. The New Crtical Idiom. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-42661-9. 
• Lukacs, Georg (1969). The Historical Novel. Penguin Books. 

External links[link]

• Audio Archives from Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth: 2009 Key West Literary Seminar (accessed 08-2010)
• The Historical Novel Society (accessed 08-2010) - An international organization for historical fiction writers and readers
• HistFiction.net (accessed 08-2010) - A comprehensive list of historical novelists
• A Guide to the Best Historical Novels and Tales (1902). Project Gutenberg etext (accessed 08-2010)
• A selection of historical novels set by epoch and author. (accessed 08-2010)
• An annotated list of historical novels for children and teens Anchorage Public Library (accessed 08-2010)

Howard A. Norman (born 1949), is an American award-winning writer and educator. Most of his short stories and novels are set in Canada's Maritime Provinces. He has written several translations of Algonquin, Cree, Eskimo, and Inuit folklore. His books have been translated into 12 languages.^[1]

Early years[link]

Norman was born in Toledo, Ohio. His parents were Russian-Polish-Jewish; they met in a Jewish orphanage.^[2] The family moved several times and Norman attended four different elementary schools, including in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His father was absent much of the time; his mother babysat other children. He has three brothers.^[3]

After dropping out of high school, Norman moved to Toronto. Working in Manitoba on a fire crew with Cree Indians, Norman became fascinated with their folkstories and culture. He spent the next sixteen years living and writing in Canada, including the Hudson Bay area and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. During this time, he received his high school equivalency diploma, and studied later at Western Michigan University Honors College^[4] where he received Bachelor of Arts degrees in zoology and English^[2] in 1972.^[5] In 1974, he earned a Master of Arts degree from the Folklore Institute of Indiana University linguistics and folklore;^[4] his Masters thesis was entitled, Fatal Incidents of Unrequited Love in Folktales Around the World.^[4] For the next three years, he participated in the Michigan Society of Fellows;^[4][6] The Cree personal name was published in 1977.^[7]

Career[link]

Writer

Norman has been a prolific writer in a variety of styles. How Glooskap Outwits the Ice Giants, The owl-scatterer, and Between heaven and earth are written for juvenile audiences. His books on Canadian folklore include The wishing bone cycle (Cree), Who met the ice lynx (Cree), Who-Paddled-Backward-With-Trout (Cree), The girl who dreamed only geese (Inuit) Trickster and the fainting birds (Algonquin), and Northern tales (Eskimo). Northern Tales, translated into Italian and Japanese, was Norman's first book translated into foreign language.^[9] In Fond Remembrance of Me is not only an English translation of Noah and the Ark stories as told by a Manitoba Inuit elder, it is also a memoir of the friendship that Norman kindles with Helen Tanizaki, a writer who is translating these same stories into Japanese before her death.

Norman describes The Bird Artist, a novel, as his most conservative book structurally, though not psychologically.^[8] Time magazine named The Bird Artist one of its Best Five Books for 1994. It also was awarded the New England Booksellers Association Prize in Fiction, and Norman received a Lannan Literary Award for this book.^[10] The Bird Artist and The Northern Lights were finalists for the National Book Award. The Northern Lights was completed with assistance from the Whiting Writers' Award.^[3] He received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets for The Wishing Bone Cycle.^[11] In On the trail of a ghost, an article published by National Geographic, Norman writes about Japan’s haiku master, Matsuo Bashō's 1200-mile walk in 1689, and the journey's epic log, entitled Oku no Hosomichi.^[12] His book, My Famous Evening: Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries & Preoccupations was published under National Geographic's "Directions" travel series. It includes a chapter on the Nova Scotia poet Elizabeth Bishop.

There are also several early books published in small numbers. These include: The Woe Shirt, Arrives Without Dogs, and Bay of Fundy Journal, amongst others.^[9]

Norman's 2010 novel What is Left the Daughter contains several American language uses that are inaccurate for his Canadian characters. For instance, "wallah" for "voila", "Canadian Thanksgiving" for "Thanksgiving" and "harbor" for "harbour".

Teacher

In 1999, Norman taught at Middlebury College in Vermont.^[13] Norman became Goucher College's Writer in Residence in 2003.^[11] In 2006, he was appointed a Marsh professor at University of Vermont.^[14] Norman now teaches creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Professional affiliations

Norman has contributed to book review periodicals (The New York Times Book Review; Los Angeles Times Book Review; National Geographic Traveler), participated on literary journals' editorial staff (Conjunctions: Ploughshares), and been a member of the board of directors for PEN New York and PEN/Faulkner group, Washington, D.C.^[4]

Personal life[link]

Norman met poet Jane Shore in 1981, and they married in 1984.^[2] They have a daughter, Emma.

Norman and Shore lived in Cambridge, New Jersey, Oahu, and Vermont, before settling in to homes in Chevy Chase, Maryland near Washington, D.C. during the school year, and East Calais, Vermont^[15] in the summertime.^[3][16][17] Their friend, the author David Mamet and Shore's Goddard College classmate, lives nearby.^[18]

During the summer of 2003, poet Reetika Vazirani was housesitting the Norman's Chevy Chase home. There, on July 16, she killed her young son before committing suicide.^[19][20]

Some of his papers, for the period of 1975–1979, are stored at the University of Texas in the Special Collections Library.^[21]

Awards[link]

• Guggenheim Fellowship^[5]
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (x3)^[22]
• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship^[22]
• 2001, Distinguished Alumni Award, Western Michigan University
• 1996, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction^[23]
• 1986, Whiting Writers' Award^[24]
• 1978, Harold Morton Landon Translation Award^[25]

Partial list of works[link]

• (1976). The wishing bone cycle: Narrative poems from the Swampy Cree Indians. ISBN 0-88373-045-6
• (1978). Who met the ice lynx: Naming stories of the Swampy Cree people. ISBN 0-916914-02-X
• (1986). The owl-scatterer. ISBN 0-87113-058-0
• (1987). Who-Paddled-Backward-With-Trout. ISBN 0-316-61182-4
• (1987). The northern lights: A novel. ISBN 0-671-53231-6
• (1989). How Glooskap Outwits the Ice Giants; and other tales of the Maritime Indians. ISBN 0-316-61181-6
• (1989). Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad and other stories. ISBN 0-671-64419-X
• (1990). Northern tales: Traditional stories of Eskimo and Indian peoples. ISBN 0-394-54060-3
• (1994). The bird artist. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-11330-0
• (1997). The girl who dreamed only geese, and other tales of the Far North. ISBN 0-15-230979-9
• (1998). The Museum Guard. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-21649-5
• (1999). Trickster and the fainting birds. ISBN 0-15-200888-8
• (2002). The haunting of L. Farrar, Straus ISBN 0-374-16825-3
• (2004). Between heaven and earth: Bird tales from around the world. ISBN 0-15-201982-0
• (2004). My famous evening: Nova Scotia sojourns, diaries & preoccupations. ISBN 0-7922-6630-7
• (2005). In fond remembrance of me. ISBN 0-86547-680-2
• (2007). Devotion. ISBN 978-0-618-73541-9
• (2008). "On the trail of a ghost". National Geographic. 213 (2), 137–149. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. OCLC 227005140
• (2010) What Is Left the Daughter ISBN 0-618-73543-3

Scholarly criticism of Norman's Cree transcriptions[link]

In 1989 the American Indian language scholar John D. Nichols published an article in International Journal of American Linguistics titled "The Wishing Bone Cycle": a Cree "Ossian"? In this article he argued that Norman's supposed Cree transcriptions were faked and consisted of words copied out of a dictionary and used improperly. Also in 1989, in the same issue of International Journal of American Linguistics, the American Indian language scholar Robert Brightman published an article titled "Tricksters and Ethnopoetics" in which he argued that the trickster cycle which appears in "The Wishing Bone Cycle" was originally recorded by the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield from the Cree story teller Maggie Achenam in 1925 and that Norman took Bloomfield's prose version and rewrote it in more poetic language.

References[link]

Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory at the 2011 Texas Book Festival.
Born	(1954-01-09) 9 January 1954 (age 58) Kenya
Occupation	Novelist
Genres	Fantasy, Historical novel

Philippa Gregory (Kenya, 9 January 1954) is an English writer of historical novels. Her best known work is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001).

Biography[link]

Early life and academic career[link]

Philippa Gregory was born in Kenya. When she was two years old, her family moved to England. She was a "rebel" at school, but managed to attend the University of Sussex. She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.

Writing[link]

She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.

Two novels about a gardening family are set during the English Civil War: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, while she has in addition written contemporary fiction - Perfectly Correct, Mrs Hartley And The Growth Centre, The Little House and Zelda's Cut. She has also written for children.

Some of her novels have won awards and have been adapted into television dramas. The most successful of her novels has been The Other Boleyn Girl, which was published in 2002 and adapted for BBC television in 2003 with Natascha McElhone, Jodhi May and Jared Harris. In the year of its publication, The Other Boleyn Girl also won the Parker Romantic Novel of the Year^[1] and it has subsequently spawned sequels — The Queen's Fool, The Virgin's Lover, The Constant Princess, The Boleyn Inheritance, and The Other Queen. Miramax bought the film rights to The Other Boleyn Girl and produced a film of the same name starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn and co-starring Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry Tudor, Juno Temple as Jane Parker, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn. It was filmed in England and generally released in February 2008.

Philippa Gregory had also begun to publish a series of books about the Plantagenets the ruling houses that preceded the Tudors, and the Cousin’s War. Her first book The White Queen, published in 2009, centers on the life of Elizabeth Woodville the wife of Edward IV. The Red Queen, published in 2010, is about Margret Beaufort the mother of Henry VII and grandmother to Henry VIII. The Lady of the Rivers, published 2011, is the life of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, first married to John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford, younger brother of Henry the Fifth.

Controversy[link]

Some of Gregory's writing has faced controversy due to lack of historical accuracy, particularly those set in the Tudor Age. Critical reviewers have stated that they would not have minded so much had she not claimed complete accuracy. But, in fact, she never did claim this, but only her research based on her understanding of it. In particular her highly successful novel The Other Boleyn Girl portrayed Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn, viewed by Protestants as a martyr and by some feminists as a victim of sexual harassment,^[2] as a villain and contained errors.^{[citation needed]}.

Media[link]

She is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers, with short stories, features and reviews. She is also a frequent broadcaster and a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4's Time Team. She won the 29 December 2008 edition of Celebrity Mastermind on BBC1, taking Elizabeth Woodville as her specialist subject.

Private life[link]

Gregory wrote her first novel Wideacre while completing a PhD in 17th-century literature and living in a cottage on the Pennine Way with first husband Peter Chislett, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, and their baby daughter. They were divorced before the book was published.

Following the success of Wideacre and the publication of The Favoured Child, she moved south to near Midhurst, West Sussex, where the Wideacre trilogy was set. Here she married her second husband Paul Carter, with whom she has a son. She divorced for a second time and married Anthony Mason, who she had first met during her time in Hartlepool.

Philippa Gregory now lives on a 100-acre (0.40 km²) farm in the North York Moors national park, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening.

Charity work[link]

Philippa Gregory also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia.^[3] Gardens for The Gambia was established in 1993 when Philippa Gregory was in The Gambia, researching for her book "A Respectable Trade".

Since then the charity has dug almost 200 low technology, low budget and therefore easily maintained wells, which are on-stream and providing water to irrigate school and community gardens to provide meals for the poorest children and harvest a cash crop to buy school equipment, seeds and tools.

In addition to wells, the charity has piloted a successful bee-keeping scheme, funded feeding programmes and educational workshops in Batik and Pottery and is working with some larger donors to install mechanical boreholes in some remote areas of the country where the water table is not accessible by digging alone.

Bibliography[link]

Wideacre trilogy[link]

1. Wideacre (1987)
2. The Favoured Child (1989)
3. Meridon (1990)

Earthly Joys[link]

1. Earthly Joys (1998)
2. Virgin Earth (1999)

The Tudor series[link]

1. The Other Boleyn Girl (2001)
2. The Queen's Fool (2003)
3. The Virgin's Lover (2004)
4. The Constant Princess (2005)
5. The Boleyn Inheritance (2006)
6. The Other Queen (2008)

On her website, Philippa Gregory says she does not write her Tudor series books in order. Read chronologically:

• The Constant Princess (Katherine of Aragon)
• The Other Boleyn Girl (Mary and Anne Boleyn)
• The Wise Woman (A young girl forced out of her nunnery and into the real world during the reformation during Anne Boleyn's time of being queen)
• The Boleyn Inheritance (Jane Boleyn, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard)
• The Queen's Fool (A young Jewish girl's story of her service in the court of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I)
• The Virgin’s Lover (Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley and Amy Robsart)
• The Other Queen (Mary, Queen of Scots, George Talbot and Bess of Hardwick)

The Cousins' War[link]

1. The White Queen (2009) - The story of Elizabeth Woodville, the queen consort of King Edward IV of England and mother of the Princes in the Tower.
2. The Red Queen (2010) - The story of Lady Margaret Beaufort and her quest to place her son Henry Tudor on the English throne.
3. The Lady of the Rivers (October 2011) - The story of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the mother of Elizabeth Woodville.
4. The Kingmaker's Daughters (August 2012) - The story of Anne Neville wife to Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales and second to Richard III of England and Isabel Neville wife of George Duke of Clarence, both daughters of the Kingmaker Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick
5. The White Princess (TBA) - The story of Elizabeth of York, daughter of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Wife of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII of England.

(Also, The Last Rose (TBA) - Protagonist unknown.)

Non-series works[link]

• A Respectable Trade (1992)
• The Wise Woman (1992)
• Fallen Skies (1994)
• The Little House (1998)
• Zelda's Cut (2001)
• Perfectly Correct (1992)
• Mrs. Hartley and the Growth Centre (1992) (This book was later republished with the new title "Alice Hartley's Happiness")

Short stories[link]

• Bread and Chocolate (2002)

Children's works[link]

• A Pirate Story
• Diggory and the Boa Conductor
• The Little Pet Dragon
• Princess Florizella
• Princess Florizella and the Giant
• Princess Florizella and the Wolves

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Philippa Gregory at the Internet Movie Database

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

Sharīf Husain (Urdu: شریف حسین), more commonly by his pseudonym Nasīm Hijāzī (Urdu: نسیم حجازی, commonly transliterated as Naseem Hijazi, or Nasim Hijazi) (c. 1914- March 1996) was an Urdu writer who turned the lives and achievements of many historical Muslims generals into glorious literary soap operas and is well-known for his novels dealing with Islamic history. He was born at the village of Sujaanpur near town Dhariwal, district Gurdaspur, Punjab in Pre-Partition India in an Arain family and migrated to Pakistan after independence from the British Rule and subsequent partition of India in 1947. He lived most of his life in Pakistan and died in March 1996.

The writer[link]

As a novel writer, Naseem Hijazi is regarded as one of the finest writers of Urdu language especially in the later 20th century. Among his popular contemporaries were Ibn-e-Safi, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Shafiq-ur-Rehman, all having their particular line of literature.

Naseem Hijazi is known for his potent and romantic description of history. There are only two writers prior to Hijazi who wrote history novels in Urdu: Abdul Haleem Sharar and Sadiq Sardhunwi, but Hijazi's writing is most credible in terms of historic description and accuracy. He exercised extra care to back his study of history by thorough research and to cite his sources whenever possible. Hijazi creates his powerful expression by blending this study of history with fairytale romanticism. The story usually revolves around characters who were related to, and shown present at the actual historical event that he wishes to focus on.

Comparison[link]

It would be worthwhile to compare Naseem Hijazi to Walter Scott in terms of reviving romanticism of the past while describing long gone history. While Walter Scott is much criticized for his controversial work and lack of historical references, Naseem Hijazi can be credited for his relatively thorough knowledge of history that is surrounded with fictitious characters to create fiction. Thus, his works are considered historical fiction, are marketed as works of fiction, and do not hold any historical bearing except for being based on a few historical facts that have been intensely romanticized.

Work[link]

Naseem Hijazi bases most of his work in Islamic history. In dealing with this history, he shows both the rise and fall of the Islamic Empire. His novels Muhammad Bin Qasim, Aakhri Ma'raka, Qaisar-o Kisra and Qafla-i Hijaz describe the era of Islam's rise to political, militaristic, economic, and educational power. While Yusuf Bin Tashfain, Shaheen[1], Kaleesa aur Aag, and Andheri Raat ke Musafir describe the period of Spanish Reconquista. In one of these novels (Kaleesa Aur Aag) he has painfully, yet truthfully, depicted the infamous Inquisition that began by targeting Jews and ended with the conversion or expulsion of the Moriscos or Muslims.

In Akhri Chataan, he describes the Central Asian conquests of Genghis Khan and his destruction of the Khwarizm Sultanate. The novel shows the brutal conquests of the Mongols, the military geniuses of Genghis Khan, the undying will power of Sultan Jalal ud-Din Khwarizm Shah, and the unworthy condition of the Abbassid Caliphate of Baghdad.

He wrote two sequential novels on British conquest of India, and described the shortcomings of Indian nations after the collapse of Mughal Empire. The story, Mu'azzam Ali, starts a little before the Battle of Plassey. The lead character, Muazzam Ali joins the fight against the British with the army of Siraj-ud-Daula. The story goes around as the character moves from one place in India to another in search of the lost glory and freedom. He takes part in the third battle of Panipat and finally settles in Srirangapattana that was growing in power under the towering personality of Haider Ali. The book ends almost around the death of Haider Ali. The second book, Aur Talwar Toot Gayee (And the Sword is Broken) is more about Haider's son Sultan Tipu where the same character is finding his dreams being fulfilled in Tipu's valiant endeavors against the British East India Company. The book culminates in the sad and untimely martyrdom of Sultan Tipu.

He also wrote a novel on the Independence of Pakistan named Khaak aur Khoon. Many believed that the novel was his own story.

Theme of the work[link]

This writer seems to have been inspired a lot by Allama Muhammad Iqbal's poetry. He tries, not very unlike Iqbal, to remind his readers of the lost glory of the Muslims and in a way inspire them to work with commitment to achieve lost glory in all walks of life. He portrays Islamic tolerance, the will to fight for the protection of the weak, and the love for arts and knowledge. His readers believe that he has best illustrated Allama Muhammad Iqbal's Islamic philosophical ideal of Khudi (Self) in Urdu prose, where in a way he has justifiably imparted the message that is presented in Iqbal's "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam".

Impact and influence[link]

Naseem Hijazi has immensely influenced his readers both in and out of Pakistan. He has been one of the key sources of Islamic ideologies in Pakistan and helped build valour during the Soviet-Afghan War. Many Pakistani educated youngsters throughout 1950s till today are believed to have been emotionally and ideologically inspired by his writings. He enjoys a very large reader base even after his death.

Naseem Hijazi on screen[link]

Three of Naseem Hijazi's novels have been dramatized. Akhri Chataan and Shaheen were dramatized in 1980s and were televised on Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) as independent drama serials. Akhri Chataan is considered to be the greatest historic attempt ever made by PTV. The theme songs composed for the serial and the character play of Sultan Jalal ud-Din by Salim Nasir earned high acclaim.

The Novel Khaak aur Khoon was dramatized into a movie with the same name and is one of few block buster movies that Lollywood or Lahore film industry has ever produced.

It is argued that many of his novels, if provided with the production facilities of Hollywood, will produce movies equal in grandeur to Ben-Hur, Braveheart and The Patriot. But due to the lack of required attention, a great work of literary art is untouched by the filming icons.

Novels/books by Naseem Hijazi[link]

• Khaak aur Khoon (Dirt and Blood) { Download Link http://www.mediafire.com/?dzjqa7bpe93mu5g }
• Yousuf bin Tashfin (Yousuf, The Son of Tashfin)
• Akhari Chattan (Volume-1) Online (The Last Rock)
• Akhari Chattan (Volume-2) Online (The Last Rock)
• Aakhari Marka (The Last Battle) (fiction)
• Andheri Raat Ke Musafir (Travelers of the Dark Night)
• Aur Talwar Toot Gai (Volume-1) (And the Sword was Broken)
• Aur Talwar Toot Gai (Volume-2) (And the Sword was Broken)
• Daastaan-e-Mujahid (Tale of the Fighter)
• Gumshuda Qaafley (The Lost Caravans)
• Insaan Aur Devta (The Human and the Deity
• Kaleesa Aur Aag (Church and Fire)
• Muhammad Bin Qasim
• Pakistan Se Diyare Haram Tak (travelogue)
• Pardesi Darakht (The Alien Tree) (fiction)
• Pouras Ke Hathi (Poras's Elephants) (comedy)
• Qafla-e-Hijaz (The Caravan of Hijaz)
• Qaisar-o-Kisra (Caesar and Kisra)
• Saqafat Ki Talaash (In Search of Culture) (comedy)
• Shaheen(Volume-1) (The Eagle)
• Shaheen(Volume-2) (The Eagle)
• So Saal Baad (After 100 Years) (comedy)
• Sufaid Jazeera (The White Island) (comedy)

External links[link]

• A phd Thesis Written on Naseem Hijazi's Novel "THE CRITICAL AND EXPLORATIVE ANALYSIS OF NASIM HIJAZI'S HISTORICAL NOVEL WRITING" Read Online [2]