Historical fiction is a story set in a real past, told by someone who was not there. The events, places, and often some of the people are real, while the plot and most of the characters are invented. Done well, it lets you feel what it was like to live in another century, not just learn what happened in it.
This guide covers how the genre is defined (and why two respected bodies use different numbers), where it came from, its main subgenres, the most popular periods, and the landmark novels worth reading first.
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Quick Answer: Historical Fiction Definition
Historical fiction is a novel set in a period before the author’s own lifetime or experience, built on research into real settings, events, and people, with an invented story at its center.
In practice, that means three things:
- A real past. The setting is a real time and place, such as Tudor London, Napoleonic Spain, or occupied France.
- Research, not memory. The author reconstructs the period from sources rather than writing from lived experience.
- An invented story. The plot, and usually the main character, is fiction, even when real people walk through it.
How Long Ago Does a Novel Have to Be Set?
There is no single official rule, but two widely cited definitions set the line.
The Historical Novel Society counts a novel as historical if it was written at least 50 years after the events it describes, or if it was written by someone who was not alive at the time and so approached the events only through research.
The Walter Scott Prize, the UK’s leading award for the genre, is stricter. More than half of an eligible book must be set at least 60 years before its publication date.
The 60-year figure is a nod to the genre’s founding novel. Walter Scott subtitled Waverley “‘Tis Sixty Years Since”, because its story of the 1745 Jacobite rising was set roughly sixty years before he wrote it.
The research test matters more than the number. A novel written in 2020 about the 1970s might pass the 50-year line, but if its author lived through that decade and draws on memory, many readers would call it a period novel rather than historical fiction. Leo Tolstoy, by contrast, was born in 1828, so War and Peace (about 1805 to 1812) was written entirely from research.
A Short History of the Genre
Walter Scott and the Birth of the Historical Novel
Stories about the past are as old as storytelling itself, but the modern historical novel begins with Waverley (1814). Walter Scott published it anonymously, and it was a sensation. Its young English hero is caught between loyalties during the Jacobite rising, and the book shows ordinary people swept up by forces much larger than themselves.
Scott followed it with Ivanhoe (1819), set in 12th-century England. Its knights, tournaments, and outlaws shaped how readers imagined the Middle Ages for the next two centuries, and the prize for historical fiction still carries his name.
The Nineteenth-Century Classics
Scott inspired writers across Europe and America. Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and James Fenimore Cooper all turned to the past, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) set Napoleon’s invasion of Russia against the lives of a handful of aristocratic families.
These books established the genre’s central move: private lives unfolding inside public history.
The Twentieth Century
The genre went mass market in the 20th century. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936) won the Pulitzer Prize, and Robert Graves’s I, Claudius (1934) showed that a real historical figure could narrate his own story in a voice both witty and convincing.
After the war, series fiction took off. Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander (1969) began the twenty-book Aubrey-Maturin series, and the historical mystery became its own shelf with Anne Perry’s The Cater Street Hangman (1979) and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980).
The Modern Boom
Since the 1990s, historical fiction has become one of the best-selling genres in publishing. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander (1991), Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, and Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) reached millions of readers and, in time, television audiences.
Literary prizes followed the readers. Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize for Wolf Hall (2009) and again for its sequel Bring Up the Bodies (2012). Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (2014) won the Pulitzer Prize.
Key Elements of Historical Fiction
What separates a historical novel from a story that simply happens to be set in the past? Five things.
An authentic setting. The time and place are real and matter to the story. Move Cornwell’s Uhtred out of 9th-century Wessex, and there is no story left.
Research worn lightly. Good authors know far more than they put on the page. Food, clothing, law, religion, and money are woven into scenes rather than delivered as lectures.
An invented story. The main plot and protagonist are usually fictional, which gives the author room to move. When the protagonist is real, the author invents their private thoughts and conversations.
Period-true minds. Characters think and believe as people of their time did, including in ways that make modern readers uncomfortable. A medieval knight who holds 21st-century views breaks the spell.
Real events and people. The fiction intersects with history: a battle, a trial, a plague, a king. The best novels show how those events felt from the ground.
Historical Fiction vs Other Genres
Historical Fiction vs Historical Nonfiction
Nonfiction (history books, biographies, memoirs) sets out to tell what happened, using evidence. Historical fiction uses the same evidence to tell a story about what it might have felt like.
A biography of Julius Caesar is nonfiction. Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, which follows Caesar’s rise through invented scenes and dialogue, is historical fiction.
Historical Fiction vs Alternate History
Alternate history asks “what if?” and changes a known outcome. Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) imagines an America divided between the victorious Axis powers, and Robert Harris’s Fatherland (1992) is set in a 1964 Berlin where Germany won the war.
Traditional historical fiction keeps the record intact. Interestingly, the Historical Novel Society still counts alternate history as part of the wider genre, since it depends on the same research. We cover the difference in detail in Historical Fiction vs Alternate History, and the best “what if” novels have their own section in our Alternate History hub.
Historical Fiction vs Fantasy
Fantasy builds invented worlds, often with magic. George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (1996) borrows heavily from the Wars of the Roses, but Westeros is not a real place, so it is fantasy.
Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom (2004), set in the real 9th-century England of Alfred the Great, is historical fiction. Between the two sits historical fantasy, where a real past gains a touch of myth, as in Cornwell’s Arthurian novel The Winter King (1995).
Historical Fiction vs Historical Romance
Historical romance is a subgenre, not a separate genre. The difference is emphasis. In historical romance, the love story drives the plot, and the book follows romance conventions, while in wider historical fiction, romance may be present but is not the engine.
Types of Historical Fiction
Historical fiction covers a lot of ground. These are the main subgenres, with a starting point for each.
Traditional (Literary) Historical Fiction
The period itself is the star, and the novel sets out to recreate it in depth. Mantel’s Wolf Hall reconstructs Henry VIII’s court through the mind of Thomas Cromwell, and Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth (1989) builds a whole 12th-century world around the construction of a cathedral.
Read next: the Wolf Hall Trilogy and the Kingsbridge series.
Historical Romance
A love story at the center, set against a real period. Outlander mixes romance, adventure, and time travel in 18th-century Scotland, while Philippa Gregory’s Tudor novels put the women of Henry VIII’s court at the center of the story.
Read next: the Outlander series, Philippa Gregory, and our list of historical fiction with female leads.
Historical Mystery and Thriller
Crime in the past, where the detective has no forensics, no police force as we know it, and often powerful enemies. C.J. Sansom’s Dissolution (2003) sends a hunchbacked Tudor lawyer to investigate a murder in a monastery, and Anne Perry’s Victorian mysteries explore the gap between London’s drawing rooms and its slums.
Read next: the Shardlake series, the Charlotte & Thomas Pitt series, and the Falco series set in Vespasian’s Rome.
War and Military Historical Fiction
Battles, campaigns, and the soldiers or sailors who fight them. Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Tiger (1997) opens the Sharpe saga in India, and O’Brian’s Master and Commander takes readers aboard a Royal Navy ship in 1800.
Read next: the Sharpe series, the Last Kingdom series, and our best WWII historical fiction.
Biographical Historical Fiction
A real person tells their own story, or has it told for them, with the gaps in the record filled by imagination. Margaret George’s The Autobiography of Henry VIII (1986) and The Memoirs of Cleopatra (1997) are classics of the form, and Colm Tóibín’s The Master (2004) follows the novelist Henry James through the 1890s.
Read next: Hilary Mantel and Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy.
Family Sagas and Multi-Period Novels
Stories that follow a family, or a place, across generations. Edward Rutherfurd’s Sarum (1987) traces the families of one corner of England over roughly 10,000 years, and Follett’s Fall of Giants (2010) follows five families through the First World War.
Read next: Edward Rutherfurd and the Century Trilogy.
Time-Slip and Dual Timeline
A modern character is linked to someone in the past, and the two stories run side by side. Barbara Erskine’s Lady of Hay (1986), in which a modern journalist relives the life of a medieval noblewoman, is the classic of the form, and dual timeline novels are among the best-selling books in the genre today.
Popular Historical Fiction Time Periods
Some eras draw writers and readers again and again. For a full breakdown, see the most popular historical fiction time periods or browse every era from our time periods index.
| Period | Dates | Why readers love it | Start here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient World | before about 500 AD | Empires, emperors, and epic battles | Ancient World hub |
| Medieval Europe | about 500 to 1500 | Kings, knights, Vikings and cathedrals | Medieval Europe hub |
| Tudor England | 1485 to 1603 | Court intrigue and Henry VIII’s six wives | Tudor England hub |
| Napoleonic Wars | 1799 to 1815 | Land and sea adventure | Sharpe series |
| Victorian Era | 1837 to 1901 | Class, crime and industry | Victorian Era hub |
| First World War | 1914 to 1918 | The end of an old world | WW1 hub |
| Second World War | 1939 to 1945 | Resistance, courage and moral choices | WW2 hub |
Ancient World
Rome dominates, but Greece, Egypt, and the Near East all have devoted readers. Robert Harris’s Pompeii (2003) follows a water engineer in the days before Vesuvius erupts.
See our best Ancient Rome historical fiction and ancient Middle East historical fiction.
Medieval Europe
A thousand years of history, from the fall of Rome through the Viking Age to the Wars of the Roses. Readers come for knights and castles and stay for the politics.
See our best medieval historical fiction, Viking historical fiction, and Arthurian historical fiction.
Tudor England
Probably the most written-about dynasty in English fiction. Henry VIII, his wives, and his daughter Elizabeth I offer drama no novelist would dare invent.
The Napoleonic Wars
Two of the genre’s longest-running series live here: Sharpe on land and Aubrey-Maturin at sea.
The Victorian Era
Industrial cities, rigid class lines, and a fascination with crime. It is the home of the Victorian mystery, from Anne Perry to the gaslit thrillers that followed.
The World Wars
The First World War is written as a tragedy, the end of innocence for a whole generation. Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong (1993) and Pat Barker’s Regeneration (1991) are the essential starting points.
The Second World War is now the single most popular setting in the genre, from the home front to the resistance. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (2005), narrated by Death in a small German town, is one of the best-loved examples.
Landmark Historical Fiction Novels
If you want to understand the genre’s range, these fifteen books are a good place to start. For a longer list, see our best historical fiction of all time.
| Book | Author | Published | Setting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waverley | Walter Scott | 1814 | Scotland, 1745 |
| War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy | 1869 | Russia, 1805 to 1812 |
| I, Claudius | Robert Graves | 1934 | Rome, 1st century AD |
| Gone with the Wind | Margaret Mitchell | 1936 | American South, 1860s |
| The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco | 1980 | Italy, 1327 |
| The Pillars of the Earth | Ken Follett | 1989 | England, 12th century |
| Outlander | Diana Gabaldon | 1991 | Scotland, 1740s |
| Regeneration | Pat Barker | 1991 | Scotland, 1917 |
| Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks | 1993 | France, 1910 to 1918 |
| The Other Boleyn Girl | Philippa Gregory | 2001 | Tudor England |
| Dissolution | C.J. Sansom | 2003 | Tudor England, 1537 |
| The Last Kingdom | Bernard Cornwell | 2004 | Wessex, 9th century |
| The Book Thief | Markus Zusak | 2005 | Germany, 1939 to 1943 |
| Wolf Hall | Hilary Mantel | 2009 | Tudor England, 1500 to 1535 |
| All the Light We Cannot See | Anthony Doerr | 2014 | France and Germany, WWII |
Award-Winning Historical Fiction
Awards are a useful shortcut to the best new historical fiction.
The Walter Scott Prize, founded in 2010, is the UK’s leading prize dedicated to the genre. Its first winner was Wolf Hall, and recent winners include Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter (2025) and Alice Jolly’s The Matchbox Girl (2026).
The Booker Prize is not limited to historical fiction, but the genre has done well there. Mantel is one of only a handful of writers to win it twice, both times for her Cromwell novels.
In the United States, several historical novels have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, including Gone with the Wind and All the Light We Cannot See.
How Accurate Should Historical Fiction Be?
Readers and authors argue about this constantly, but most agree on a few principles.
Major events should be right. If a novel is set at Waterloo, the battle should happen when and where it did.
Real people should be believable. An author can invent a king’s private conversations, but his actions should fit the record.
The texture of daily life should fit the period. Attitudes, technology, money, and speech all matter.
Small liberties are fine if they are honest. Compressing timelines or merging minor characters is common, and the best authors explain their changes in a historical note at the back of the book.
We go deeper into What Makes Historical Fiction Accurate.
Why Do People Love Historical Fiction?
It makes history human. History books tell you what happened. Historical fiction tells you what it felt like.
It teaches without lecturing. Many readers know more about the Tudors from Mantel and Gregory than from school.
It explains the present. Institutions, borders, and conflicts that shape our world today have roots in the periods these novels explore.
It offers real escape. The worlds are strange, but their existence gives the genre a weight that pure fantasy does not have.
It rewards loyalty. Long series let readers live alongside one character for decades, which is why reading order guides are among the most searched pages in the genre.
How to Start Reading Historical Fiction
Start with a period you already find interesting. If you love Rome, begin there. The time periods index is the fastest way to find your era.
Try more than one subgenre. If battles leave you cold, a historical mystery or a family saga might hook you instead.
You do not need to know the history. Good historical fiction gives you everything you need as you go.
Try a series. A long series lets you settle into a world. Our best historical fiction series is a good shortlist.
Pair a novel with the history. Many readers finish a novel and then pick up a history book about the same period, which makes both richer.
New to the genre? Our historical fiction for beginners guide suggests easy first reads.
Frequently Asked Questions
What qualifies as historical fiction?
A novel qualifies as historical fiction when it is set in a real past that the author researched rather than lived through. The Historical Novel Society uses a line of at least 50 years between the events and the writing, while the Walter Scott Prize requires more than half of a book to be set at least 60 years before publication.
What is the 50 year rule in historical fiction?
The 50 year rule comes from the Historical Novel Society, which defines a historical novel as one written at least 50 years after the events it describes, or by someone who was not alive at the time and approached them only through research.
Who invented historical fiction?
Walter Scott is usually credited with creating the modern historical novel. His first novel, Waverley, published anonymously in 1814, was set during the Jacobite rising of 1745 and became a model for novelists across Europe and America.
Is historical fiction based on true stories?
Historical fiction is based on real history, but the story itself is usually invented. The setting, major events, and some characters are real, while the plot and main character are typically fictional.
What are the main types of historical fiction?
The main types are traditional literary historical fiction, historical romance, historical mystery and thriller, war and military fiction, biographical fiction, family sagas, and time-slip or dual timeline novels. Alternate history and historical fantasy are closely related forms.
What is the most popular time period for historical fiction?
The Second World War is currently the most popular setting for historical fiction. Tudor England, Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian era are also perennial favorites with readers and writers.
Is alternate history a type of historical fiction?
It depends on the definition. Alternate history changes a real outcome, so many readers treat it as a separate genre, but the Historical Novel Society includes it within historical fiction because it relies on the same research into a real past.
How is historical fiction different from historical romance?
Historical romance is a subgenre of historical fiction in which the love story drives the plot and the book follows romance conventions. Historical fiction in general may include romance, but it is not required.
Is Game of Thrones historical fiction?
No. A Game of Thrones is a fantasy because Westeros is an invented world with magic and dragons. It draws on real history, especially the Wars of the Roses, but it is not set in the past.
Do I need to know history to enjoy historical fiction?
No. Good historical fiction gives readers all the context they need as the story unfolds, and many people learn their history from novels rather than the other way around.
How accurate is historical fiction?
Most historical novels keep major events, dates, and real people accurate while inventing private conversations, minor characters, and details the record does not cover. Many authors include a historical note explaining where they changed or compressed events.
What is a good first historical fiction book?
Good first reads include The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell. All three are gripping stories that explain their periods as they go.
Conclusion
Historical fiction is the art of making the past feel present. It takes real places and real events, adds invented lives, and lets readers stand inside moments they could otherwise only read about.
From Walter Scott’s Highlands to Mantel’s Tudor court and Doerr’s occupied France, the genre has spent two centuries proving that a good story can carry a great deal of history without ever feeling like homework. Pick a period, pick a book from the list above, and start reading.
