Why Do American Readers Love British/European Historicals So Much?
Thursday, March 22, 2012Posted in: random musings
Every time I go onto a review site the books being reviewed are historicals, what’s up with that?
Listen, there was a time when the only historicals I could read were American Westerns, I’ve moved on from those days, but I still don’t get the obsession for most of you guys. I confess I love, love, love period dramas on TV, but reading regency books, or any other historicals has always been a struggle for me.
So what’s the big attraction for you lot? Is it the clothes, the whole young women and their seasons thing? The ton? The Dukes and Duchesses? What?
What gives y’all?
Becky H
March 22
11:21 am
I’m not a regency romance fan…Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre being the exceptions.
My favorite time period is the Tudor Era and all the scandals in their courts…you had a possible murder mystery (the death of Amy Robsart and how Elizabeth I or someone in her court may have had a hand in it) You have a murder mystery…the death of Lord Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots’s possible involvement.
You have the serial groom…Henry VIII who wanted a divorce from his first wife so much that he started a change in religion in England. He also put two of those wives to death.
You had a queen known as Bloody Mary for how many people she had put to death for heresy….and lets not forget her phantom pregnancies.
You had a queen who was known as the “Virgin Queen” but we still debate today whether she was or not.
Any historicals that have the real Tudors in them I love to read because I’m curious to see how much more scandal they can put them in…quite a lot.
Mireya
March 22
12:17 pm
In my case, NOTHING to do with history and everything to do with fairy tales. To me, it’s like reading grown-up fairy tales, whenever I pick up a “historical” romance to read. I think that’s also why I don’t read that many contemporaries. Contemporaries make it a LOT harder for me to suspend disbelief.
JoanneF
March 22
4:34 pm
I guess for me it’s like science fiction, which I also love. It’s a world that’s so alien that I can completely escape. It’s not like a real world to me. Usually, the people are rich and shiny and beautiful and they don’t have today’s problems. I know they had different (and many of the same)problems they do now, but I just don’t want to hear about them. I have enough of my own.
Although I also love to read contemporaries, I have a much harder time suspending belief. Stuff that I know is improbable in the real world jumps off the page at me and I roll my eyes. For instance, when I read about a heroine who moves to Manhattan after working her way through community college and lands a job as a secretary that allows her to rent a cute 3-room apartment in the Village, I know it’s a fairy-tale unless she has a sugar daddy. It really bugs me in a setting I’m familiar with and can easily pick out the crap. When the equivalent happens in Regency Romancelandia or on an alien planet, I just swallow it as part of the fairy tale.
Plus, men dressed nice back then. A 21st Century man in tight buckskins would get an entirely different reaction.
Linda Hilton
March 22
4:58 pm
As someone who never read very many contemporaries and who doesn’t care much at all for capital R Regencies, I guess it’s the exploration of human emotions in different settings. reading about how people survived — or might have survived — in conditions and circumstances very different from anything I would ever encounter IRL. My reading career (?) goes back a long ways (I’m old) so I have a fairly extensive inventory to compare. I think the first “historical romance” I ever read was an abridged version of “The Count of Monte Cristo” when I was about 11 or 12, and I was fascinated by the history, the geography, the cultural references that were so outside of anything I’d encountered in suburban Chicagoland. Within a few years — we’re talking early 1960s here — I had added Sabatini and Yerby and Bristow and many of the other best sellers of the 30s, 40s, and 50s that were the forerunners of Woodiwiss, Rogers, et alia.
But I find the emphasis on the wealthy/artistocracy that dominates the capital R Regency subgenre far less interesting than some of the older stories that focused on more than just landing a wealthy husband. Oh, sure, some of ’em were “cracktastic” (even if I’m not exactly sure what that means) but they did have some substance.
I’m glad to see some of them coming back in digital form and I hope that engages a whole new generation of readers, the way I was engaged with Dumas and Sabatini. It’s kind of amazing, when you think of it, that “The Flame and the Flower,” which can be credited with re-starting the historical craze, is 40 years old this year. Wow!
Roslyn Holcomb
March 22
7:49 pm
I’m a history geek. I don’t care for regencies. I fiend for medievals which hardly anyone does anymore, and it’s Roberta Gellis’s fault. I also love American history settings with the exception of the American Civil War and the antebellum south. I have no aversion to the period, I set my own two historicals there, but apparently most authors get their southern history from GWTW and it just makes me gag.
Americans in general are history md, and it’s not just romance. There are whole bookstores just for history buffs, and don’t forget the Ren Faire and Civil War re-enactors. There are whole bookstores just for those people, and trust, they’re obsessed. I used to manage a bookstore and history books old surprisingly well.
Las
March 22
8:56 pm
I agree completely with Mireya. I’m not a romantic person at all irl, so I need that fairy tale veneer that a historical setting provides for me to enjoy a romance. I can’t read straight contemporaries longer than category length.
It’s really not about the history for me, and after 20 years of romance reading I’d still be hard-pressed to point out if a book is set in the Regency or Victorian or whatever period. I don’t read historical fiction that isn’t romance…when I want actual history, I read non-fiction.
Kim in Hawaii
March 22
11:32 pm
Aloha, Karen! I concur with the comments so far but let me make a general observation. The UK has 2000+ years of history, pageantry, and chivalry. The USA (a child of the UK) has 200+ years history that sometimes pales in excitement as much as we may appreciate not having monarchy, it is still a fairy tale to be a princess). There is just something about the language, traditions, and even the dress from a time long ago.
Likewise, I’ve seen Brits glom over stuff in the US that I consider blah. Perhaps it is the grass seems greener …
ME2
March 23
2:35 am
I think the simple answer is we don’t have royalty and/or titles here.
Jeannie S. (Jeannie189)
March 23
2:04 pm
@Roslyn Holcomb – just curious (I love them too and you’re right they are harder to find) – is it because Roberta Gellis did them so well or because they were really bad writing? I don’t think I have ever read any of her books, so I was wondering why you said that.
Roslyn Holcomb
March 23
2:50 pm
Gellis is a masterful storyteller. I first read the Roselynde Chronicles 1980 and I re-read them often. For me, they’re a primer on how to tell a story. Her Heiress series set during the Napoleonic wars is phenomenal as well. The characters live and breathe for me. She’s the author who got me hooked on medievals, that’s why I used the word “fault.” No one else comes close. Ellora’s Cave has released the Roselynde and Heiress series as ebooks. This is probably my third or fourth time buying these books and I will continue to do so as technology changes. They are the “White Album” on my keeper shelf. The most amazing thing is that these books have stood the test of time. Most of my keepers were written in the eighties and very early nineties. Roselynde was published in 1964 and is still fresh today as the first time I read it. Regretfully, Gellis no longer writes romance. According to her publishers pushed for more “romance” in her books, and she couldn’t comply. As she pointed out, during the tumultuous times she writes about the characters would’ve felt that the world was literally coming to an end. Hardly a time for romance, especially as the concept simply didn’t have the level of importance we give it today.
Linda Hilton
March 23
4:57 pm
Roslyn — Oh, thank you for mentioning how early Roberta Gellis was writing and publishing, because she was part of the bridge from Dickens and Dumas and Hugo through Sabatini and Shellabarger and Yerby and Bristow to Woodiwiss and Deveraux and Lindsay. As I’ve argued for a long time, the tradition and history of the historical romance is long and glorious; it didn’t spring full-grown from Nancy Coffey’s slush pile at all.
Roslyn Holcomb
March 23
7:34 pm
I don’t know why Gellis doesn’t receive the recognition she so richly deserves. Maybe it’s because she’s out of romance.
Linda Hilton
March 23
8:44 pm
Roslyn: I suspect part of the reason Gellis isn’t recognized is because she’s never been the blockbuster success that gains that kind of attention.
Michelle
March 23
9:39 pm
I like the series Roberta Gellis writes with Mercedes Lackey. Fantasy type of alternative history of Queen Elizabeth I.
Jeannie S. (Jeannie189)
March 24
6:26 pm
Roslyn – Thanks for clarifying! I will have to give her a try, see if I can find some of her romance novels.
Sandra Schwab
March 26
6:50 pm
I’m not American, but German and I blame my love for British history on Rosemary Sutcliff. I started reading her books when I was eight or nine, and as a result I completely fell in love with all things English. (Well, not *all* things, exactly. I don’t like Marmite, for one thing.)
And I fell in love with Scotland because of Diana Gabaldon and Kathleen Givens. (Yes, I’m one of *those* people. And yes, when I first visited Scotland I was utterly disappointed that the area around Edinburgh looks very much like … uhm … home, only with more sheep.)
Now I teach British history and British literature, and write historical romances set in Britain, which is a great excuse to gobble up as many research books and historical documentaries (I LOVE David Dimbleby’s “How We Built Britain” and “THe Seven Ages of Britain”!!!) as I possibly can.