@inbook{c8322f01701c40769619b4d8e3f401b5,
title = "Historical Fictions",
abstract = "This chapter offers a survey of historical fictions by women between 1945 and 1974. Despite critical neglect of this genre, Wallace argues that these years are extremely rich in historical fictions ranging from {\textquoteleft}serious{\textquoteright} historical novels by writers like Naomi Mitchison and H.F.M Prescott to {\textquoteleft}popular{\textquoteright} fiction by Jean Plaidy and Norah Lofts. The chapter focuses on five exemplary types of fiction: the biographical historical novel, often centralising royal Tudor women such as Elizabeth I, associated with Margaret Irwin; the regency romance as established by Georgette Heyer; the Marxist-realist novels of Sylvia Townsend Warner; Jean Rhys{\textquoteright}s Wide Sargasso Sea as a Modernist version of the Gothic romance; and Mary Renault{\textquoteright}s radical rewriting of classical history to foreground a notion of gender as performative and fluid. ",
keywords = "Twentieth-century literature , women's writing, historical fiction, historical novel, biographical historical novel , the regency romance , Marxist-realist novels , Modernist version of the Gothic romance , radical rewriting of classical history",
author = "Diana Wallace",
year = "2017",
month = jul,
day = "29",
language = "English",
isbn = "978-1137477354",
volume = "IX",
series = "Palgrave History of Women's Writing",
publisher = "Palgrave Macmillan",
pages = "242--258",
editor = "Clare Hanson and Susan Watkins",
booktitle = "The Palgrave History of British Women{\textquoteright}s Writing",
edition = "1st",
}