Historical Novels Featuring Real People of the Past as Main Characters

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I’ve always been drawn to the nineteenth century, and I’ve probably seen nearly every true crime drama and documentary on television, so it’s no surprise my first novel is based on a true crime set in the mid-1800s. I’ve also read a lot of historical fiction, of course, and especially enjoy novels based on real people and true events, whether it’s about a murder or an interesting but relatively unknown historical figure, often thrust unwillingly into the spotlight. It’s been said the truth is often stranger than fiction. I would say the truth is often more fascinating than fiction. At least that’s what I found when I researched my first novel about a murdered 19th-century prostitute known as Diamond Bessie.

When I first learned of Bessie’s story, I was immediately intrigued because of the time period, and because of the apparent injustice. I decided to look into the case and Bessie’s life to determine if there was enough material for a novel, and what I uncovered was astounding. Not much is known about Bessie leading up to when she became a demi-mondaine, so my novel is very much a combination of fact and fiction. But I like to think that my novel as a whole is an accurate reflection of the times and its social mores, especially for marginalized women like my main character.

I’ve highlighted nine authors and their works that will take you back in time to another place, another way of life, all told from the points of view of real people who may not have lived to tell their stories but are told now through others’ pens.

Sarah Schmidt, See What I Have Done

Who hasn’t heard of Lizzie Borden, or the famous rhyme? To say that much has been written about the horrific axe murders of Lizzie’s father and stepmother in 1892 is an understatement. If you’re going to read a novel about it, pick up this one. The author, who is Australian, tells the story from a few points of view, most notably Lizzie’s. And she really gets into her head. See What I Have Done is also an immersive sensory experience. On nearly every page you can hear, smell, or taste the story (especially pears). And don’t miss the afterword where Sarah Schmidt recounts a night she spent at the Borden home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Alone.

Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

If you’ve ever been to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, you may have seen Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting, Christina’s World. You’ve probably at least heard of the famous painter. When the two met, Christina Olson was in her mid-forties and had been living with a degenerative muscular disorder her entire life. She never left the farm where she lived with her brother. Wyeth was young and not well known yet. Christina’s small world—her piece of it as the title suggests—is expanded through her friendship with the artist, and the reader is the richer for knowing her story.

Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

Before I read Mark Beauregard’s novel, The Whale: A Love Story, I didn’t know much about the personal lives of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The two men met while Melville was writing Moby Dick, and the relationship reportedly greatly affected how Melville told the tale. Scholars have long speculated about the romantic feelings the two famous authors may have had for each other. Melville even moved his family to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, despite being deep in debt, because he wanted to be near Hawthorne. In The Whale, Beauregard makes you feel the depth of the torment Melville experienced when he couldn’t have what he loved most.

Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

Hannah Kent is another Australian writer who wrote a novel set in another country, this one Iceland. Burial Rites is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in the Nordic island nation, in 1830, for two murders. We not only get inside the mind of Agnes, but also that of the wife in a family Agnes is sent to live with before her execution. A woman who did not want the murderess living in her home.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

South Carolinian Sarah Grimke was one of the lesser-known 19th-century abolitionists and suffragists before The Invention of Wings. I worked as a television news reporter and anchor in Charleston, South Carolina for a few years in the 1990s and had never heard of her before picking up this book. The story is told from the alternating viewpoints of Sarah and the slave she received as a “present” on her eleventh birthday, Hetty “Handful” Grimke. We watch them grow into adulthood, into courageous women, who risk their lives to fight for what is right. Sue Monk Kidd’s portrayal of them is incredibly moving.

Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood is most well-known for her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, but she also penned a historical novel about a young woman in Canada convicted in the 1840s of killing her employer and his housekeeper. Alias Grace follows Grace Marks in prison where she is seen by a fictional psychologist hired to determine whether Grace’s life sentence should be commuted. Atwood is known for her exquisite prose and Alias Grace doesn’t disappoint.

Martha Hall Kelly, Lilac Girls trilogy

Martha Hall Kelly spent ten years researching and writing her debut novel, Lilac Girls, and it shows in this beautifully written story that chronicles how a New York socialite and actress, Caroline Ferriday, helped survivors of Nazi Germany’s labor camp for women, where many of the women endured horrific medical experiments. Kelly then went back in time to follow Caroline’s mother, Eliza Ferriday, in Lost Roses, during World War I and the Russian Revolution. And then Kelly went back even further to the Civil War, to tell the harrowing story of Caroline’s grandmother, Georgeanna Woolsey, who was a Union nurse, in Sunflower Sisters. Luckily, you don’t need to read the three books in order.

Alice Hoffman, The Marriage of Opposites

Although perhaps best known for her famous fictional witches, the Owens sisters, Alice Hoffman’s historical novels, filled with magical realism, are also worth reading. The Marriage of Opposites tells the story of Rachel Pissarro, the mother of the famous painter Camille Pissarro. You might think Hoffman would have chosen to write about the more famous of the two. Instead she focuses on the forbidden love story between Rachel and Frederic Pissarro, a Frenchman seven years her junior. Set among the Jewish community on the lush island of St. Thomas, the novel begins in the early 1800s, and eventually takes the reader to Paris, France, where Camille Pissarro will eventually become known as the Father of Impressionism.

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall trilogy

If there’s one novel anyone who loves history should read, it’s Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Followed by Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light. Each reminds us how brutal life was back in the days of Henry VIII, when he was chopping off heads left and right. Even though you know how the story is going to end for Anne Boleyn and eventually Thomas Cromwell, the main protagonist of the trilogy, you’re still turning the page as if you don’t know what’s going to happen and you can’t wait to find out. And the writing. Mantel’s sentences are like nesting dolls. She packs more into a sentence than any other writer and unpacking each one is always a pleasurable experience.

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