Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow is a fictionalized telling of the story of the Collyer brothers — two eccentric New York brothers from a wealthy family, living in a spacious brownstone on 5th Avenue. They became famous, not for their wealth or their looks or their philanthropy, but for their compulsive hoarding. It’s a tragic story and Doctorow’s fictionalized… Read more
Back in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s, Japan was closed to the world around them. It was illegal for a Japanese citizen to leave Japan. It was illegal for foreign citizens to enter Japan, except under the most strictly monitored conditions. But countries around the world understood that Japan would be a lucrative market and trading partner, if only they could… Read more
What makes someone a freak? It’s the question at the heart of The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson. The story revolves around P.T. Barnum’s American Museum and the “freaks” who entertained the masses there. There were midgets and fat ladies, savages from exotic lands, musclemen and other oddities. But what made them freaks, and what would they choose,… Read more
These days, we talk about Banned Book Week and we talk about censorship in school libraries, but in the 1500’s, they were serious about censorship. Get caught reading something on the Vatican’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) and your prize was an appointment with the local Inquisitor. Based on the true story of Giordano Bruno — an Italian… Read more
Historically, a woman on her own has always been a woman at risk. In some cultures around the world, a woman is still not permitted to own property, to have her own money, to walk along a city street in daylight without fear of reprisals. In 1857, a widowed woman had limited options available to her, but Emma Cunningham was determined… Read more
Historical fiction can be challenging, both for writers and readers. It doesn’t take much — just a word, a name, a description — to bounce you right out of the story. In the Author’s Note at the end of Mistress of the Art of Death, Ariana Franklin says “It is almost impossible to write a comprehensible story set in the… Read more
I swear, this is the last Jane Austen mash-up I’m going to read. I also swear that I will not break out into Dear Jane letters, as Elizabeth is inclined to do at critical junctures of the book. The Postal Service could not be terribly reliable in Europe in her day, but the letters provide an easy way for Elizabeth… Read more
In The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel, Maureen Lindley looks at the life of a notorious Chinese princess from a forgiving angle. Eastern Jewel, also known as Yoshiko Kawashima, was considered quite scandalous in her day: a Chinese princess raised in Japan, a promiscuous young woman who wore men’s clothes, she drank and smoked opium, she spied for the Japanese… Read more
One of the problems with reading historical fiction is that you usually know how the story ends. You can write a book about the Titanic, but everyone knows that the boat sinks. The same is true, to some extent, about Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman: most people know at least a little about the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men, falsely… Read more
In the late 18th century, a fabulous new scientific oddity was the toast of Europe. The Turk, a chess-playing automaton built by Wolfgang von Kempelen, was defeating chess masters across Europe. It was a true marvel of the times — a machine, built after the fashion of a Turkish ruler, that was capable of thought. Built for the amusement of… Read more