This morning, in a column I sometimes read in the paper, I read this:
My 10-year-old son chose “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” for his upcoming book report on a work of historical fiction.
I never finished the column because I did a double-take. Tom Sawyer, historical fiction?
Really?
I could see how it could be defined as such, for (as the columnist went on to say her son said), “The people in the story don’t really exist, but the time period does.”
I asked Hubby what he thought, and it turns out that he and I have different definitions of “historical fiction”.
Him: the work has to be a fictionalized retelling of a historical event, involving actual historical figures. So, according to his definition, Moon Over Manifest (to throw out an example) is not historical fiction, but rather fiction set in the past.
Me: the work has to be set in an earlier time period than an author is writing. By this definition, Moon Over Manifest is historical fiction.
By either definition, Tom Sawyer isn’t historical fiction. A classic, yes. Historical fiction, no. But that also got us debating about what defines historical fiction. We weren’t able to come to an agreement, so I’m throwing it out to the masses: what makes a book “historical fiction” for you? Is there a set definition? (Librarians, help!) And do you agree or disagree: is Tom Sawyer historical fiction?
The Book Nut 
I am not an expert, but I think of a book as historical fiction if the author's intent seems to be to take the reader back to a certain historical period or event and help them feel what it would have been like had they been there. Or to help you see events in terms of people and relationships rather than dates and facts.
Tom Sawyer? I would categorize it as humor myself–I remember laughing quite a bit!
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I don't think Tom Sawyer can really be counted as historical fiction. If you count that, then all classic works are historical fiction – everything from Pride and Prejudice to Beowulf. And even contemporary novels written a decade or two ago, like The Chocolate War, would be historical too.
I think historical fiction is fiction written with a specific past time period clearly in-mind. It can involve historical events or people, but the key is in the setting, especially how the values and tone of the chosen time period are established.
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Wow, what a thought provoking post. I've never sat down and considered what qualifies historical fiction but I'm not sure I would consider Tom Sawyer it. Great question, I look forward to seeing all the opinions regarding it!
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I think more like you than your husband in this case, although I'd add that it needs to be set earlier than the author lived, rather than when she was writing. I also think historical fiction needs to be reasonably realistic.
Anyway, in my book, _Tom Sawyer_ isn't historical fiction. Maybe historic fiction.
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I know I'm old when a story set in the 70's is considered historical fiction.
Sincerely,
Boogie Dude
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I'm with Addley. I think it's intent. Historical Fiction is written with the intenent to take you back to a specific period in time. Twain was NOT doing that when he wrote Huck Finn – he was using a fiction story to make a commentary on his OWN time.
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We were just having this same conversation on Historical Tapestry because we are hosting the challenge and people keep asking if certain books count. We decided to go with the rule that historical fiction is books set 50 years or more before the time they were written… I am not sure if that is worded right… So, no, Tom Sawyer wouldn't count
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Addley, I think you have a good point. And that was my first reaction: if Tom Sawyer is historical fiction, so is P&P and the Oddessy. And I really don't think they are.
I do agree with Shelley: it's intent, but I question that as well: if it's just intent, is a work of fiction set in, say the 1980s, written by a current author (it was her first book) “historical fiction”. Maybe it's my age (like Pen and Ink!), but I don't think so.
I do like Kailana's rule of thumb, but that rules out books like One Crazy Summer (which is a work of historical fiction, I think), which was set in 1968, but is not 50 years ago (yet).
At any rate, I think Corinne has the best reason for Tom Sawyer (or Huck Finn) not being historical fiction: it was a commentary on his own time, not a reflection on the time period.
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So, I don't work in a library, but we used this source in library school. The Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science (ODLIS) states the following:
A narrative in the form of a novel set in a specific place and period in history, or based on an event or sequence of events that actually happened. The characters may be completely fictional, but if they are known to have existed, their feelings, words, and actions are reconstructed and to some degree imagined by the author. The presence of dialogue in a historical work is usually a clue that the account is fictionalized. Sir Walter Scott established the genre in 1814 with the publication of Waverly, a novel of life in the Scottish borderlands, followed by several more historical romances, including Guy Mannering (1815) and Ivanhoe (1819). For more information, connect to the Historical Novel Society.
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You just blew my mind. I'd agree with your definition and assessment of Tom Sawyer. But at the same time, it makes me think what really is different about a book that takes place in the past chronicling an experience in the past. Which is where the mind-blowing part came in.
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I'm perplexed by the idea that to be historical fiction, a work has to involve specific historical events or people. I would have to go with the definition that historical fiction is fiction set in a time earlier than the time in which the author is writing, with the intent of evoking that time period. Something like Tom Sawyer or P&P, written as contemporary fiction but no longer contemporary, aren't historical fiction.
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Here's what my genre poster in my classroom says – “A fictional story that takes place in a particular time period in the past. Often the setting is real, but the characters are made up from the author's imagination.” Now I know this is a simplified 3rd grade definition but I guess with that as a definition Tom Sawyer would be Historical Fiction. On the other hand, Mark Twain was not setting out to write Historical Fiction, but it's certainly hard to ask the intent of those who've gone on before. Yep, categorizing all of those titles is never easy. Heck I have a hard time making it clear as a mud for my students….
Now I'll be thinking of that all night! 🙂
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So, Hubby brought up Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy: is that historical fiction? (Um, no…) But it's set in a time period earlier than the author is writing… (Ah, I love my husband. Really!)
I do think, Inside a Book, that that oversimplified description is probably what's behind the 10yo thinking Tom Sawyer is historical fiction. Then again, it seems the definition is pretty fuzzy altogether. (Thanks, Tricia, for the catalog input, though! I had no idea the genre was so old!)
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I always believed that historical fiction referred to a work of fiction in which the author wrote about a part of the past they haven't experienced first hand. That would be like me writing about the 60s. That's my definition anyway.
So Tom Sawyer is not. Isn't it satire anyway?
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Wow! This is really thought provoking, and it is became increasingly clear by reading the comments to this post that historical fiction holds many different definitions.
Here are a few definitions that I found that were interesting:
This genre are stories set in the past and try to recreate the auro of a time past, reconstruct characters, events, movements, ways of life and spirit of days gone by. – library.thinkquest.org/J0110782/genre/definitions.html
Novels in which real events, places, or people are incorporated into a fictional or made up story.
I would agree to one of the earlier posters that setting is important in historical fiction as well.
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Can't help weighing in.
What do you call a book that used to be contemporary realistic fiction?
I was initially surprised: “Tom Sawyer? Historical Fiction? But that's a classic! But I guess it is historical fiction.” So according to me it IS historical fiction. It's also all those other things: classic, humor, satire, former-contemporary-realistic-fiction.
For me, it's more the feel of the thing. Books like Tom Sawyer are historical fiction. So, I have no trouble calling Tom Sawyer historical fiction. I can see how the lines are fuzzy, for sure though.
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I'm glad I found your post, and I also can't help weighing in; this is something I've been thinking about in the past week since the Newbery and three of the Newbery honors went to what I would consider historical fiction.
If it comes down to choosing just between your definition and your husband's, I can see his point, but I still choose your definition. It seems to me that books set in a realistic past form a distinct genre together; the inclusion or non-inclusion of actual historical figures doesn't seem big enough to create separate genres.
However, as all of these comments illustrate, the definition isn't that simple. I agree with Shelley, Addley, Corinne, and Beth G., who say that the author's intent to evoke a particular time period is part of the definition of historical fiction. I don't think there can feasibly be a rule of thumb, as some have suggested, because that gets too complicated. Kailana suggests a work is historical fiction when it takes place 50+ years before the author wrote it; however, people may miss the “before the author wrote it” part and just count down the years remaining until the setting of a certain novel happened 50+ years ago, automatically making the book historical fiction. I also think 50 years is kind of arbitrary; if I wrote a novel that took place in the 1980s, that's still in the past. Events that have happened in the 1980s are considered history.
But if I wrote a novel that took place in the late 1990s, it may be hard to distinguish from contemporary fiction, unless the novel was based heavily on events or people of the time. Do we consider 1999 “history?” Do we consider 2010 “history?” It seems that an author's intent in evoking a certain time period implies that this time period is in some way very different from the present. So perhaps that should be part of the definition: a work of historical fiction is written with the intent of evoking a past time period that is in some way different from the writer's present. But, there's probably plenty of ways that could be confusing, too.
Alysa, I think you and the writer of Melissa's article (and that writer's 10-year-old son) may be confusing the name of the genre with the definition of the word “historical” as part of history. Yes, Tom Sawyer is historical in that sense, but it doesn't really fall under the genre label “historical fiction.” I think Amira has eloquently made this distinction by calling Tom Sawyer “historic fiction.”
Um, just realized I wrote a whole book on this. Sorry! Like I said, this has been on my mind this week. I've really enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts!
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Alysa: I'd probably call it a classic. Or maybe just an old book. 🙂 But I can see your point.
Melanie: thank you for your thoughts. I guess to tackle the idea of historical fiction, you need to tackle the idea of history. I have a hard time thinking of anything in my lifetime as “history”, and yet (as I realized when I was explaining the fall of the Berlin Wall to some girl scouts the other night) it is. (I still cringe when I read books set in the 80s, that weren't written then. It's not history. Not yet. :-D) Interesting to think about.
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I like Tricia's definition of historical fiction. This describes a book that I just finished reading titled, “The Scorpion's Bite” by Aileen G. Baron, to a 'T'. I LOVE historical fiction!
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Tom Sawyer was written in 1876 and Tom Sawyer takes place in the 1840’s. He was writing about a period 35 years earlier, not his present time. It is said that Twain was writing about his own boyhood and what life was like along the Mississippi River. Sounds like “historical fiction” to me….
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