A Quote by Lauren Willig

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history’s illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.

Lauren Willig

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Acknowledge Acquired Any Authors Before Came Class Cousin Feel Foot Held Historians Historical History History Class Host Illegitimate Images Library Like Margaret Mitchell Most Novel Other Periods Plastic Plays Profound Realities Role Scholarly Set Shaping Smell Sound Various Well Were Whether Widely

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Lauren Willig
American - Author
Born: March 28, 1977

In the same way that I've no desire to live in earlier historical periods, I never touch historical recipes. Most historical cooking is detestable.

David Starkey

So we've done science songs. We've done historical songs. A lot of people would like us to do more historical songs. Our history record would probably be like the people's history of the United States, set to music.

John Flansburgh

My process for determining which eras I'd write about was to just read history books that gave a really broad overview of Chinese history. And when I came across a historical figure or a historical incident that was especially interesting to me, ideas for characters and stories would surface.

Susan Barker

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.

Lauren Willig

I do like the idea of the novel of repressed college students being a contemporary novel of courtship! I guess what I would say to that is, we tend to think of historical periods and historical mores as ending a lot more concretely than they do. Like, in an Austen novel, there are lots of reasons - cultural, moral, religious - why the characters don't have sex during courtship. Maybe, even though those reasons have kind of expired, historically, they're still around in some sense.

Elif Batuman

When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."

Nicholas Meyer

I feel very strongly that where the facts exist, a historical novelist should use them if they're writing about a person who really lived, because a lot of people come to history through historical novels. I did. And a lot of people want their history that way.

Alison Weir

The novel since its origins has been the privatization of history... the history of private life ... and in that sense every novel is an historical novel.

Jose Emilio Pacheco

For many people during many centuries, mankind's history before the coming of Christianity was the history of the Jews and what they recounted of the history of others. Both were written down in the books called the Old Testament, [the Torah] the sacred writings of the Jewish people ... They were the first to arrive at an abstract notion of God and to forbid his representation by images. No other people has produced a greater historical impact from such comparatively insignificant origins and resources.

John Roberts

My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.

Hilary Mantel

The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.

Salman Rushdie

Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation.

George R. R. Martin

Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.

Michelle Dean

What distinguishes the historical social system we are calling historical capitalism is that in this historical system capital came to be used (invested) in a very special way. It came to be used with the primary objective or intent of self-expansion. In this system, past accumulations were 'capital' only to the extend they were used to accumulate more of the same.

Immanuel Wallerstein

If you make a determination that [story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac] is not historical, do you throw it away? I don't think we can say whether it's precisely, scientifically historical.

Elie Wiesel

I mean, every novel's a historical novel anyway. But calling something a historical novel seems to put mittens on it, right? It puts manners on it. And you don't want your novels to be mannered.

Colum McCann

A Quote by Lauren Willig

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