Why historical fiction is a genre

Periodically I’ll come across a discussion on social media about whether historical fiction is a legitimate genre.

The argument against it goes as follows. The “historical fiction” label serves only to indicate a book’s setting. This is because novels in recognized genres incorporate plot patterns that let readers know what they’ll be getting. In romances, you have a central romantic relationship and an optimistic, “happily ever after” (or “happy for now”) ending. With mysteries, you get a crime, investigation, or other type of puzzle that’s resolved by the end, often by a detective figuring out where the clues lead. Psychological suspense novels offer creepy atmosphere, a heightened sense of disturbance, and complex plots with startling twists. With historical fiction, though, there are no story conventions to adhere to. Plus the plots and writing styles are too diverse to fit under a single category. Therefore, it’s not a genre at all, just a collective term to refer to novels set in the past.

I can understand the reasoning. But as a librarian who’s written two lengthy tomes whose titles make my opinion on the matter kind of obvious, I have some thoughts I wanted to put out there for consideration. 

 

Pub. by Bloomsbury/Libraries Unlimited (2005 and 2009)

This post is based on concepts mentioned in the books and expands upon subsequent comments I've made in Facebook discussions. The books are, admittedly, expensive at list price, but your library may have one or both, or can get you copies via interlibrary loan.

In short: it’s true that historical fiction isn’t a genre in the same way that romance, mystery, and psychological suspense novels are genres.

But it is still a genre, one with its own writing conventions and reader expectations, though these aren’t based around plot.

There’s an area within librarianship called readers’ advisory (RA for short), which concerns itself with connecting readers with books. The term is most often used with respect to leisure reading, which covers both fiction and nonfiction. Readers’ advisory librarians—I count myself among them—use our knowledge of books’ genres and subgenres, as well as other factors, to help readers find their perfect literary match.

Among writers, genres can have a negative connotation if they’re thought of as restrictive barriers. But within RA, the idea behind genres isn’t to pigeonhole books into rigid categories but to group them according to elements that appeal to readers and make it easier for them to find more books they enjoy. Novels can fit into multiple genres, too. “Genre-blends” are most definitely a thing, a very popular one. Ever heard of romantasy?

For anyone interested in this topic, I’d suggest checking out The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction by librarians Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Saricks, now out in its 3rd edition (ALA Editions, 2019). It’s a classic text in the field, with chapters organized around the different fiction genres. Joyce was one of my editors when I wrote for NoveList (a RA database for libraries) years ago, and I’ve worked with Neal in the past in various capacities related to RA work; they know their stuff.

Within this book, fantasy, westerns, and historical fiction are termed “landscape genres.” Genres don’t have to be based around common plot patterns, although some of them are. The landscape genres are defined based on a different type of content: their settings, the type of worldbuilding and background detail the author uses, and the resulting experience for their readers (like, for historical fiction, immersion into an earlier time).

Intricately described settings, real or imaginary, create realms and set readers within them. This is the hallmark of the Landscape genres. Worldbuilding reigns here in novels rich with evocative landscapes, sumptuously realized settings, and fascinating framing detail … These novels turn readers into literary tourists, whisking them away to different locales and time periods, providing context and detail to new worlds and histories. (Wyatt and Saricks, p.121)

It’s interesting to note that I haven’t seen the same “not a genre!” arguments around fantasy and westerns that exist around historical fiction, even though these novels are similarly varied in terms of plot structure, writing styles, characters, and pacing. Science fiction is another; it has its tropes, as historical fiction does, but no single overarching story arc.

All genres have parameters, and those for historical fiction are often debated. For example, how far back should a novel be set for it to qualify? But historical novels— regardless of the subgenre they fall into—do share many commonalities, like their authors’ attempts to reimagine a past time and place, including the physical setting, character mindsets, customs, beliefs, and more, in a way that integrates these details smoothly into an engaging story.

Exceptions test the boundaries of the genre definition and prove that these boundaries exist. Romance readers will cry “not a romance” if a love story were to end tragically. Fans of horror fiction won’t be satisfied if a book labeled as such lacked a dark, dread-inducing atmosphere. And historical novels with insufficient historical ambience, too many anachronisms, or inconsistent worldbuilding, or those set too close to the present day, will elicit “this isn’t really historical fiction” type comments.

It’s within the subgenres that we can see marked diversity in terms of plot structures and writing styles. Historical mystery, historical romance, sagas, historical adventure, etc., all have loyal fans, some of whom prefer to remain within that smaller focus. Other readers are genre omnivores (like me) and prefer to branch out across most or all of them.

The subgenre (and setting and era) diversity of historical fiction on display!

The Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook group, which has over 700,000 members, has semi-regular posts debating the genre definition but seems, nonetheless, to understand the scope of its large umbrella. Recent posts have recommended Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife (literary historical), Ilima Todd’s A Song for the Stars (inspirational/romance/biographical historical), Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January (historical fantasy), Irina Shapiro’s The Lovers (timeslip/historical romance), Rosamunde Pilcher’s September (saga), Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory (historical horror), Ken Follett’s Hornet Flight (historical thriller) and Sheila Williams’ No Better Time (a traditional historical novel).

One genre, many facets, and a large and wonderfully diverse assortment of stories. All with historical settings designed for readers to dive right into.

The extraordinary story of Edmonia Lewis

Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) was a neoclassical sculptor of Black-Indigenous parentage who gained international renown in the late 19th century yet fell into obscurity decades later. Alongside a recent artistic revival, her life and work should get a deserving boost through Baker’s eloquent biographical novel.

Pub. by Dafina/Kensington, April 2026 (288pp)

Her imagined first-person voice makes a statement. With cool, deliberate pacing and an exalted vocabulary, Edmonia reveals her extraordinary story, from her childhood in northern New York, where she wove baskets with her Ojibwe aunts for tourists, through the height of professional achievement in Rome, where she settled after tiring of racist treatment in her birth country.

Much about Lewis remains shadowy even today. And so, while anchored in the historical record, Baker’s tale includes fictional episodes for dramatic purposes and to fill in gaps.

The most unusual events in the narrative really did happen. After attending New York Central College through the financial support of anti-slavery Baptists, the teenager then known as Mary enrolls at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she endures sniffy racial attitudes and is brought to trial for poisoning two female students. Baker’s explanations for this shocking accusation make logical sense, as does Mary’s decision to use the middle name she was given in baptism, Edmonia, after moving to Boston to start afresh.

Edmonia Lewis, ca. 1870. By Henry Rocher
Adam Cuerden - National Portrait Gallery (United States)

A detailed author’s note would have been beneficial, but one could hazard a guess that some secondary characters and unlikely coincidences involving them were invented. What feels entirely real, though, is Edmonia’s strength of will. She is bold, uncompromising, occasionally prickly (even with her benefactors), confident in her abilities, and determined to elevate and showcase the humanity of her people by sculpting them in marble. What a force she must have been. Edmonia brings to life a woman who refused to be defined by anyone but herself.

This review, cross-posted to the Historical Novel Society website, was based on my reading of a NetGalley copy. I had included Edmonia in my preview of spring/summer 2026 novels, and it didn’t disappoint in the least. The novel has only a few dozen Amazon reviews, so it seems to be flying under the radar (I would contribute one myself, but Amazon doesn’t seem to like me posting reviews there).

Edmonia Lewis was the focus of an exhibition at the Peabody-Essex Museum that ran from Feb-June 2026, and an interview with the curator (on YouTube) is still posted at the PEM website. The exhibition has since traveled to the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia, so if you’re in the vicinity of Athens (Georgia, that is) between now and next January, it looks very much worth checking out. Many photos of Lewis’s sculptures are posted at the museum website.

From the mountains of Morocco to northeastern France

There’s an almost mystical quality about the horse that draws together the passionate cast of characters within Elizabeth Letts’ newest novel.

To be sure, Tassa—whose name means “beloved” in the Berber language (Tamazight)—is a flesh-and-blood creature, a stunning mare the “color of a red-cheeked apple… light on her feet and queenly in appearance,” who is born in the Sultan’s royal stables in Fes, Morocco’s capital, in 1905. Over the years, Tassa will change hands many times, be acquired and lost, cross the sea, and disappear for stretches, fiercely missed by the boy who cherished her. She is innocence, strength, nobility, glory, and hope, qualities frequently trampled upon amid the scourge of the First World War. She represents, to quote a phrase spoken at the dawn of an earlier devastating war, the better angels of our nature.

Pub. by Ballantine (Aug. 2026)

 

(To ease any concerns, as the author herself has done: Tassa doesn’t die a heroic death in battle. The title doesn’t refer to that.)

Fallen for France opens with a six-year-old village boy from Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains. Beddou is sent away to be indentured with a distant cousin, Saïd, who turns out to be a cruel man. Rescued from his isolated life as a shepherd by the roguish Hassan, and apprenticed to a saddlemaker in Meknes, Beddou comes to care for Tassa, all too briefly. After losing her to theft, Beddou dreams of reclaiming her. Tassa and the string of amber beads gifted by his mother, which "glowed like six shining suns," become, for him, ideals that symbolize love and home.

Both broadly scoped and intimate, the perspective passes smoothly through many well-constructed characters, including Beddou, Hassan, and an Algerian-born French soldier called Jean-Baptiste Thibault. The action moves forward overseas, along with Tassa. There we encounter Estelle Maillot, a young woman caring for her disabled younger brother alone in rural northeastern France, close by the expected approach of the German army; and Thomas Bellows, head of veterinary surgery for the Blue Cross in the adjacent town of Court-Chapelle. Both know horses well and recognize Tassa’s magnificence when they see her. While not a viewpoint character, Louhou, Saïd’s sympathetic young wife, weaves colorfully through many of their lives.

The novel acknowledges the fact, which few other WWI novels have, that several hundred thousand troops from France’s North African colonies served in Europe. Yet this is neither a traditional wartime tale nor a familiar coming-of-age journey about a boy and his horse. Instead, it centers on how war comes to touch those not on the battlefield. The phrasing is poetic and thoughtful:

As he chased behind his cousin on the well-trodden paths that crossed the Atlas, in the country his kinsmen thought of as “the Berber lands,” Beddou didn’t know that a powerful wind was blowing down from the north as Europe’s great empires jockeyed for power over this sovereign land. The Kaiser’s visit and its aftermath would later be called the First Moroccan Crisis. The first bead slipped onto a cord that would eventually lead to the necklace known as the Great War. In time, all would wear it.

Alongside, the author unfolds a beautiful story of love, loss, and an ever-present yearning for things that may or may not be attainable.

Letts has worked and lived in Morocco, where her husband hails from, and her respect for the country and its people comes through clearly. As does her love of horses, the subject of several of her acclaimed and best-selling previous books. Like Geraldine Brooks’ magnificent Horse, Fallen for France should appeal to anyone appreciating a high-quality literary experience, both prior equine lovers and not.

Panic at the graveyard: Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh

Tillinghast is an old New England surname. I know it well. At the previous institution where I worked, Bridgewater State College (now University) in southeastern Massachusetts, Tillinghast Hall is a former dorm that now contains faculty offices. It was named after Nicholas Tillinghast, the school’s first principal in the mid-19th century, back when it was a teachers’ training college. Later Tillinghasts were well-known members of the campus and community when I was there.

Published by Viking (US/Can), June 2026.
Also pub. in the UK by The Borough Press.

So when I heard about Clare Cavenagh’s debut novel, I was hoping for an entertaining read soaked in regional lore, and I got it. Although I don’t typically choose literary horror, the subject intrigued me. Cavenagh based her story in real-life history, namely the New England vampire panic of the 18th and 19th centuries, which was new to me.

The word “vampire” never appears in the text, but it’s exactly what Stutley Tillinghast is, to his everlasting regret. By 2017, he’s been around for over a century, under various pseudonyms and guises to hide his unnatural longevity. Some decades ago, he returned to his rural birthplace, near the Rhode Island town of Uxford, resuming the name and role of the Protestant minister he once was.

He has no close friends or family, and every 70 days, he must, well, feed, the resulting bodies buried neatly in his basement. He’s tried to put an end to himself to escape this horrific cycle, unsuccessfully. This time he has a plan he hopes will work.

Before carrying it out, Tillinghast pens a full confession as part of his life story. Then a local hotel owner phones about a very ill young Englishwoman, name of Sarah Tillinghast, in a room there. In a brief coherent moment, Sarah had asked for him. Is she some relation?

Wary but curious, Tillinghast brings Sarah back to his house, where he’s alarmed to see what appears to be her transformation—into a being like himself—in full progress. Even more worrisome is that Sarah resembles the woman who, so long ago, turned Tillinghast into what he is.

More cerebral than most in its genre, Tillinghast is grippingly thought-provoking in its evocation of the inherent darkness of his reality and how tries to make sense of it:

If the world was unfolding according to God’s plan, and if everything was part of God’s creation, what was a thing like Tillinghast doing in it? Why had a predator like him been released into the garden? He didn’t know. Why would another emerge? He didn’t know.

The level of violence is on par with your typical non-cozy crime thriller. Because of the descriptions of the attempted cures for Sarah’s illness, though, anyone overly squeamish may want to skim those sections. Plus, it is about vampires. Enough said.

A heads up that the historical component, Tillinghast’s written declaration, comprises less than a third of the book in total. The rest is set in the near-present, but there’s a feel of 19th-century formality about the writing style, emphasizing that Tillinghast doesn’t genuinely belong in this time. His house isn’t wired for electricity, and you get the sense his personality hasn’t changed much over the years.

I wondered how Tillinghast avoided getting caught for so long, with so many people's disappearances within a small geographic area, but I appreciated how well his story linked up with actual events from Exeter, Rhode Island, in the 1890s. I won’t reveal them here, but you can check out this Smithsonian Magazine article if you’d like to read more. There’s also a brand new history book, Exhumed by Aaron Mahnke, that promises to dig into the origins of the vampire panic, showing how New Englanders took their superstitious beliefs to disturbing extremes. 

Kudos to Cavenagh for bringing a historical tale of the supposed undead back to unsettling life.

Australian Gothic: Kelly Rimmer's The Story Keeper (The Midnight Estate)

Fiona Winslow has years of experience in conservation architecture, and her newest project needs her help badly. In 2010, she’s just purchased the ornate Victorian mansion called Wurimbirra, her beloved childhood home in New South Wales, from her cousin after a decade of neglect.

The decrepit, cobweb-infested place is rumored to be haunted, but Fiona has only fond memories of growing up there with her Uncle Tad, a world-famous storyteller, and her more level-headed mother, who served as his assistant. Nobody understands why Fiona bought the place, and her mum’s angry when she hears the news, but Fiona’s determined to make a go of it after a painful divorce and career betrayal.

Published by MIRA (July 2026)

The questions come fast and furious in this involving book. Why did her mum and uncle argue viciously the night before he died, and why was restoration work on Wurimbirra forbidden in his will? What’s causing objects to fall off shelves late at night?

After Fiona opens a dusty box with multiple copies of an obscure British novel called The Midnight Estate and begins reading, thus unfolds a tale about two people—an adventuresome American man in 1955 California and an abused housewife—whose lives unexpectedly converge.

In this compulsively entertaining “big house” novel, does it matter that readers will work out the connection between the past and contemporary narratives long before the end? Not at all; that’s deliberate. Rimmer finishes off the loose threads in a more than satisfactory way, and the book’s wrap-up makes it clear this is more than a traditional Gothic mystery. She also strikes a good balance between imagined ghostly horrors and all-too-corporeal ones. The character development is deep and layered as Rimmer explores the ramifications of years of secrets on families.

The Story Keeper was published by MIRA, an imprint of HarperCollins, in July 2026 in the US and Canada. It was named a #1 pick by LibraryReads, meaning that staff members at public libraries across the US gave it top marks.

I wrote this review back in March 2025, figuring I’d get it done well in advance of the book’s original publication date last July.  Then I was notified that publication was being delayed a full year, so I promised to hold my writeup until then.  Readers in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK may know the novel as The Midnight Estate, the title under which it appeared in those countries a year ago.  I prefer the original title, since “The Story Keeper” is pretty nondescript, but the new title does differentiate it from the story-within-a-story it contains.  Which do you like better?  Even so long after I read the book, I can still picture the interior of Wurimbirra clearly in my mind.

Among other Australian gothic sagas, longtime readers of this site will know I’m a huge fan of Kate Morton’s work, including her latest, Homecoming (2023). I also loved Josephine Pennicott’s Poet’s Cottage (2013) and Currawong Manor (2014), the latter of which, I’m happy to see, is now on Kindle in the US.

Ghosts of the Old and New West in Téa Obreht's novel Sunrise

Obreht’s electrifying novel opens in summer 2024, in the aftermath of a plane crash. Nina, a New York-based grad student and nanny, was on vacation with her boyfriend, Ben, when the small Cessna he was flying over a remote Wyoming lake developed engine trouble, and he pushed her out to save her life. Or is that what happened? Something feels off.

Nina ponders this, but survival takes precedence. With her waterlogged backpack, she trudges through the mountainous woods in hope of rescue, rationing her protein bars and finally taking shelter in a dusty, abandoned mining town: a site that, as she learns, holds terrible secrets.

The town called Sunrise, a thriving hamlet in its Old West heyday, is the drawstring that pulls together multiple lives across more than a century. A subsequent section introduces Anton Vargas, a Tejano man who returns in 1902 to the place that cemented his reputation as a gunslinger and dime-novel hero twenty years earlier, as one of the famed “Greyrock Four.”

Pub. by Random House (Aug. 2026)

And in 2003, Coll Yard, a young man heading up the historical society in the nearby town of Sand Draw, prepares for a reenactment of the now-mythic showdown at Sunrise. As fallout from a shameful event at a local bar engulfs the community, a writer from Denver arrives with information that Coll’s unprepared to face.

This revisionist Western has real teeth and first-rate plotting. Descriptions feel viscerally real, and at first, it may seem to emphasize atmosphere and character over story, but pay close attention—and keep going.

In a puzzle-novel like this, when connections between different facets take time to materialize, one hopes the payoff will be worth it. Is it ever! The finale surpasses all expectations in this powerful, unique novel that asks why some stories are celebrated while others remain hidden.

Téa Obreht’s Sunrise is published on August 11th by Random House in the US and Canada. W&N is the UK publisher. This review also appears at the Historical Novel Society website.

Why did I decide to pick this up? A NetGalley widget dropped into my inbox without warning, and I got curious even though it didn’t seem like what I typically read. The marketing folks at Random House do this sometimes, send widgets out based on past reviews of other books of theirs. It’s effective.

Sunrise was being recommended for readers who enjoyed Daniel Mason’s North Woods. I’m not sure it was the perfect readalike choice, but there was also a comment that “The book starts with a plane crash, and I dare you to guess how it ends.” I did not guess the ending and am not sure how that would be possible. That’s some excellent plotting right there. It’s probably one of the most original and memorable novels I’ve read this year.

Was Henry VIII her true father? Alison Weir tells Katherine Carey's story in The Boleyn Secret

In her histories and fiction, Alison Weir has been particularly dedicated to Henry VIII, his six wives, and other royal family members, but her latest two novels have been departures about Tudor figures who weren’t royalty. First was The Cardinal (2025), about the unlikely rise and sudden fall of statesman Thomas Wolsey, the king’s lord chancellor.

Now we have The Boleyn Secret, her detail-rich story of a young woman who was niece to Henry’s tragic second queen, Anne Boleyn; close companion and First Lady of the Bedchamber to Anne’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I; and, perhaps, a blood relation to the king himself.

Pub. by Ballantine (2026)

Was Katherine Carey the natural child of Henry VIII and his reported mistress Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister? Speculation has buzzed for centuries.

“With fiction,” Weir wrote on social media, “you can use your imagination to fill in the gaps, explain people’s motives and reasoning, or even make up storylines. However, I feel strongly that what a historical novelist invents should be credible within the context of what is known about the subject.” Though we may never know for sure, The Boleyn Secret develops a response to this “what if” that’s grounded in historical research. (Weir credits Wendy J. Dunn’s nonfiction biography Henry VIII’s True Daughter: Catherine Carey, A Tudor Life as a particularly valuable source.)

Kate Carey, whose father William Carey died when she was four, has grown used to attracting odd attention, but she doesn’t understand it. She closely resembles the Lady Elizabeth, who sports the same shade of red hair… but they are first cousins, after all. After her aunt Anne is executed – an event that 12-year-old Kate is horrified to witness – Kate has the honor of rejoining Elizabeth’s household, even though the other Boleyns have been disgraced. King Henry has always been kind to her, and curious about her life, though she, understandably, detests him for his role in her aunt’s death:

She did not think she could bear to see that unspeakable, blood-soaked monster. She feared she might try to scratch his eyes out or give him a piece of her mind. She knew that, in truth, she would do no such thing, but still she did not want to be anywhere near him.

Much later, after Kate falls in love with Francis Knollys, a most suitable potential spouse, King Henry must approve of their marriage. Why?

The woman who may hold answers is Kate’s mother, Mary Boleyn, who’s been lying low with her beloved second husband, Will Stafford, ever since their unequal match caused a scandal at court.

Weir drops hints about Kate’s origins throughout the early sections, so much so that the “Boleyn secret” won’t be one to the reader. Instead, her novel focuses on how this kind woman discovers and comes to terms with a legacy she finds abhorrent – and how she navigates her friendship with her brilliant yet possessive cousin, Elizabeth.

Weir describes their relationship’s delicate balance with finesse as Elizabeth’s status falls, then rises. At first, Kate acts as her loving mentor, a source of stability in young Elizabeth's volatile life. After Elizabeth accedes to the English throne, her Kate becomes the companion she can’t live without, regardless of Kate’s own wishes.

Alongside the “secret,” the novel emphasizes Kate’s role as wife and mother, and how she strives to tenderly care for her family amid her royal obligations. The religious changes in the realm are ever-present, and Weir presents another new angle on Tudor society and politics as Kate and Francis, staunch Protestants, face danger during Mary I’s Catholic rule and head abroad for their safety.

As biographical fiction, The Boleyn Secret is solidly entertaining fare about a lesser-known historical woman, the uncertain status she may have endured, and the weighty responsibility of serving a queen.

The Boleyn Secret was published in May by Ballantine in the US and Canada, and by Headline Review in the UK. This is an expansion and substantial reworking of a review I’d written for Booklist Online in May.