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Reading the Past
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Reading the Past - History

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Reading the Past

14.09.2025

Reading the Past: Stephanie Cowell's The Man in the Stone Cottage reflects on the creative life of the Brontë sisters

Stephanie Cowell’s latest novel to explore the inner lives of artistic people from the past reveals the passions of the Brontë sisters, prim...

Reading the Past

09.09.2025

Reading the Past: When the Lights Came On: Cinema, Class, and the Stories We Cling To, a guest post by RJ Verity

Welcome to author RJ Verity, who's here today with a post about the role of the cinema in early 20th-century society: the background to her ...

Reading the Past

06.09.2025

Reading the Past: The Gatsby Gambit takes a fun alternative history/mystery spin on Fitzgerald's classic novel

At the outset of Anderson-Wheeler’s freshly imagined debut, all the principals of The Great Gatsby are alive and well, years after their in...

Reading the Past

02.09.2025

Reading the Past: On Isabella Street takes a Canadian perspective on the social turmoil of the late '60s and the Vietnam War

In May 1967, Toronto pulses with activity fueled by the counterculture movement, and Sassy Rankin soaks it up while attending the massive lo...

Reading the Past

02.09.2025

Reading the Past: Tatiana de Rosnay's The House I Loved evokes a 19th-century French city's transformation and trauma

Can a novel make us nostalgic for a place we've never been? With her third English-language release, an uncomplicated story brimming with ho...

Reading the Past

25.08.2025

Reading the Past: Historical novels to read in August for Women in Translation Month

For over a decade, August has been celebrated as Women in Translation Month, an observance dedicated to addressing the gender imbalance in w...

Reading the Past

25.08.2025

Reading the Past: These Heathens is a unique coming-of-age novel set in Civil Rights-era Atlanta

The narrator’s voice grabs hold immediately, and what a tale she has to tell! In small-town Georgia in 1960, Doris Steele, a Black seventeen...

Reading the Past

25.08.2025

Reading the Past: Francesca Giannone's The Letter Carrier (trans. from Italian by Elettra Pauletto) reveals a singular woman

It’s the rare woman in 1930s southern Italy who lives by her beliefs and refuses to downplay her intelligence, but Anna Allavena fits this d...

Reading the Past

12.08.2025

Reading the Past: From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century: a guest post by Nancy Hayes Kilgore

Nancy Hayes Kilgore is here today with a short essay about shifting to a new historical era, and what happens when a potential story idea ju...

Reading the Past

08.08.2025

Reading the Past: From Ford's Theater to Victorian England, M. J. Trow's The Blue and the Grey is a creative Civil War-era thriller

The spelling in the title of M. J. Trow’s historical thriller The Blue and the Grey hints that this novel set just after the US Civil War h...

Reading the Past

03.08.2025

Reading the Past: A Daughter's Place by Martha Bátiz reveals the stories of the Cervantes women

Moving from an upscale Madrid household to Valladolid’s chaotic streets and back to the capital, this debut illustrates Golden Age Spain fro...

Reading the Past

29.07.2025

Reading the Past: A historical fiction preview for autumn 2025

Fall is always a big season for fiction, and here are 14 upcoming novels that caught my interest. Distinctive settings across the board, wit...

Reading the Past

29.07.2025

Reading the Past: Interview with India Edghill about her new epic of 1870s India, A Tiger in the Garden

India Edghill’s latest novel A Tiger in the Garden is a sweeping epic set in the isolated Indian hills in the Victorian era. At its heart ...

Reading the Past

29.07.2025

Reading the Past: Agony in Amethyst by A. M. Stuart unfolds an exciting mystery in 1911 Singapore

This fifth and last volume in the Harriet Gordon series, set in colonial Singapore in 1911, is the most excitingly constructed mystery I’ve ...

Reading the Past

12.07.2025

Reading the Past: Janet Wertman's Nothing Proved offers a new look at the future Elizabeth I

Everyone familiar with the Tudors knows that Elizabeth I became queen after the death of her older half-sister, Mary I, giving her name to t...

Reading the Past

07.07.2025

Reading the Past: Conn Iggulden's epic Roman novel Tyrant shows young Emperor Nero asserting his power

At the start of Iggulden’s smartly executed second novel in a trilogy—following Nero (2024) —our main character, Nero, is a willful, occasi...

Reading the Past

28.06.2025

Reading the Past: The case of the spoilery prologue

A few months ago, another historical fiction reader and I were exchanging thoughts via email about prologues. Such as: why do so many books...

Reading the Past

24.06.2025

Reading the Past: When Men Abound, Create Women, an essay by Terri Lewis, author of Behold the Bird in Flight

Welcome to Terri Lewis, who's here with an essay exploring the characters of her biographical novel, as well as their motivations. Her Beho...

Reading the Past

19.06.2025

Reading the Past: Raymond Wemmlinger's The Queen's Rival tells the story of a little-known Tudor heir

Tudormania has come and gone, but the era remains popular, and many individuals’ stories remain obscure. Such is the case with Lady Margaret...

Reading the Past

14.06.2025

Reading the Past: The latest trend in historical fiction: the 1960s

Has everyone come around to the realization that novels written now and set in the '60s are considered historical fiction? Even more, this ...

Reading the Past

05.06.2025

Reading the Past: Tragedy and resilience in Vanessa Miller's The Filling Station

In the early 20th century, the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was home to numerous Black-owned businesses and a thriving African Ame...

Reading the Past

02.06.2025

Reading the Past: An illustrious American family and its stain: Karen Joy Fowler's Booth

The 19th-century Booth family had once been known by the American public for something other than their second youngest son’s heinous act. T...

Reading the Past

28.05.2025

Reading the Past: Alison Weir's The Cardinal presents the public and secret lives of Tudor statesman Thomas Wolsey

Born an innkeeper’s son, Thomas Wolsey rose spectacularly to become a Catholic cardinal and Henry VIII’s principal advisor. Weir’s ( The Pas...

Reading the Past

23.05.2025

Reading the Past: A forgotten Egyptian goddess: Rachel Louise Driscoll's The House of Two Sisters

Do you believe in curses? Might you be convinced of their reality if terrible things befell you and your family after an unheeded warning? ...

Reading the Past

20.05.2025

Reading the Past: A Leg to Stand On, a guest post by Nell Joslin, author of Measure of Devotion

Nell Joslin, author of the Civil War-era novel Measure of Devotion (Regal House, May 2025). contributes a short essay about how validation ...

Reading the Past

17.05.2025

Reading the Past: Review of Nicola Cornick's The Secrets of the Rose, set during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715

Nicola Cornick writes dual-period novels about unjustly forgotten women where both narrative strands compel equally, which doesn’t happen of...

Reading the Past

11.05.2025

Reading the Past: Rita Woods' The Edge of Yesterday is a riveting time-travel novel set in the Motor City

Set in Detroit in the present and a century earlier, Rita Woods’ gripping timeslip novel explores two people’s yearnings for a different fut...

Reading the Past

06.05.2025

Reading the Past: The spirit and the flesh: Emily Maguire's Rapture

Emily Maguire’s Rapture is an entrancing vision of a woman who unexpectedly rises to the height of influence in an exclusively male realm: ...

Reading the Past

30.04.2025

Reading the Past: The Director, inspired by a true story, details one man's moral compromises in artistic creation

Smarting after a Hollywood flop, Austrian-born director G. W. Pabst, a Weimar cinema pioneer, returned to Europe. Trapped in Austria while v...

Reading the Past

25.04.2025

Reading the Past: Bits and pieces of historical fiction news

Here are some articles and other news items that caught my attention in the last week. The 2025 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction sh...

Reading the Past

19.04.2025

Reading the Past: Isabel Allende's My Name Is Emilia del Valle adds a new angle to her ongoing family saga

Allende has created many addictive sagas about the extended del Valle family and their intersections with history and one another. The epony...

Reading the Past

11.04.2025

Reading the Past: Are you missing the Tudor era? Check out these ten recent and upcoming novels

Are you a historical fiction fan looking back fondly on the years of Tudormania, when novels set in 16th-century England (especially about t...

Reading the Past

05.04.2025

Reading the Past: Haunting deceptions: Beth Ford's In the Time of Spirits

In the Time of Spirits is a novel of the late 19th-century spiritualist movement, seen from the perspective of those who performed seances f...

Reading the Past

25.03.2025

Reading the Past: N. J. Mastro explores the tumultuous life of Mary Wollstonecraft in Solitary Walker

Mary Wollstonecraft is perhaps best known for two accomplishments: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a treatise that caused her ...

Reading the Past

20.03.2025

Reading the Past: The Long and Winding Road, an essay by Lorraine Norwood, author of The Solitary Sparrow

Continuing with the Small Press Month focus, I'm pleased to welcome Lorraine Norwood to Reading the Past with an essay about her long journ...

Reading the Past

14.03.2025

Reading the Past: The need for speed: Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express imagines the lead-up to a historic train disaster

On the morning of October 22, 1895, the Paris Express leaves the town of Granville in Normandy for its seven-hour, ten-minute trip to the ca...

Reading the Past

11.03.2025

Reading the Past: Our multicultural family history, a guest post by Alix Christie, author of “The Shining Mountains”

I'm very happy to have Alix Christie here on the blog with her essay about the family history behind her latest book, a family saga set in t...

Reading the Past

07.03.2025

Reading the Past: Lauren Willig's The Girl from Greenwich Street looks behind the history of America's first recorded murder trial

On the evening of December 22, 1799, Elma Sands, a young woman of illegitimate birth, donned her best calico gown and left her cousin Caty’s...

Reading the Past

04.03.2025

Reading the Past: Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum, an essay by Stephanie Carpenter, author of Moral Treatment

Thanks to author Stephanie Carpenter for contributing a post about crafting characters within the setting for her debut novel. Her essay ma...

Reading the Past

26.02.2025

Reading the Past: Which promotional blurbs matter the most to historical fiction readers?

The literary world has been having a long-overdue conversation about the practice of blurbing, that is, writers providing promotional endors...

home›Reading the Past›History

Reading the Past - History

Reading the Past: Stephanie Cowell's The Man in the Stone Cottage reflects on the creative life of the Brontë sisters

Reading the Past: When the Lights Came On: Cinema, Class, and the Stories We Cling To, a guest post by RJ Verity

Reading the Past: The Gatsby Gambit takes a fun alternative history/mystery spin on Fitzgerald's classic novel

Reading the Past: On Isabella Street takes a Canadian perspective on the social turmoil of the late '60s and the Vietnam War

Reading the Past: Tatiana de Rosnay's The House I Loved evokes a 19th-century French city's transformation and trauma

Reading the Past: Historical novels to read in August for Women in Translation Month

Reading the Past: These Heathens is a unique coming-of-age novel set in Civil Rights-era Atlanta

Reading the Past: Francesca Giannone's The Letter Carrier (trans. from Italian by Elettra Pauletto) reveals a singular woman

Reading the Past: From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century: a guest post by Nancy Hayes Kilgore

Reading the Past: From Ford's Theater to Victorian England, M. J. Trow's The Blue and the Grey is a creative Civil War-era thriller

Reading the Past: A Daughter's Place by Martha Bátiz reveals the stories of the Cervantes women

Reading the Past: A historical fiction preview for autumn 2025

Reading the Past: Interview with India Edghill about her new epic of 1870s India, A Tiger in the Garden

Reading the Past: Agony in Amethyst by A. M. Stuart unfolds an exciting mystery in 1911 Singapore

Reading the Past: Janet Wertman's Nothing Proved offers a new look at the future Elizabeth I

Reading the Past: Conn Iggulden's epic Roman novel Tyrant shows young Emperor Nero asserting his power

Reading the Past: The case of the spoilery prologue

Reading the Past: When Men Abound, Create Women, an essay by Terri Lewis, author of Behold the Bird in Flight

Reading the Past: Raymond Wemmlinger's The Queen's Rival tells the story of a little-known Tudor heir

Reading the Past: The latest trend in historical fiction: the 1960s

Reading the Past: Tragedy and resilience in Vanessa Miller's The Filling Station

Reading the Past: An illustrious American family and its stain: Karen Joy Fowler's Booth

Reading the Past: Alison Weir's The Cardinal presents the public and secret lives of Tudor statesman Thomas Wolsey

Reading the Past: A forgotten Egyptian goddess: Rachel Louise Driscoll's The House of Two Sisters

Reading the Past: A Leg to Stand On, a guest post by Nell Joslin, author of Measure of Devotion

Reading the Past: Review of Nicola Cornick's The Secrets of the Rose, set during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715

Reading the Past: Rita Woods' The Edge of Yesterday is a riveting time-travel novel set in the Motor City

Reading the Past: The spirit and the flesh: Emily Maguire's Rapture

Reading the Past: The Director, inspired by a true story, details one man's moral compromises in artistic creation

Reading the Past: Bits and pieces of historical fiction news

Reading the Past: Isabel Allende's My Name Is Emilia del Valle adds a new angle to her ongoing family saga

Reading the Past: Are you missing the Tudor era? Check out these ten recent and upcoming novels

Reading the Past: Haunting deceptions: Beth Ford's In the Time of Spirits

Reading the Past: N. J. Mastro explores the tumultuous life of Mary Wollstonecraft in Solitary Walker

Reading the Past: The Long and Winding Road, an essay by Lorraine Norwood, author of The Solitary Sparrow

Reading the Past: The need for speed: Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express imagines the lead-up to a historic train disaster

Reading the Past: Our multicultural family history, a guest post by Alix Christie, author of “The Shining Mountains”

Reading the Past: Lauren Willig's The Girl from Greenwich Street looks behind the history of America's first recorded murder trial

Reading the Past: Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum, an essay by Stephanie Carpenter, author of Moral Treatment

Reading the Past: Which promotional blurbs matter the most to historical fiction readers?

home
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Reading the Past
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History