Historical Novelists Center

From Guidevines, a user-editable wiki for writers

From Guidevines

Originally a resource created by some fans of historical life, HNC has provided graded bibliographies, based on books to read but also with web links, music, video, and other resources as available.

Individual works are assessed in terms of their usefulness to a writer of historical fiction, not to someone doing a term paper or a doctoral thesis. Remarks on readability are a help to those with a low tolerance for dry specialist texts. They pull no punches on calling some surprising items of very little use, or actually misleading.

Another unusual feature is marking books as to which "tier of research" they best fall in. T1 books are recommended for those just deciding on or exploring a period which with they may be unfamiliar, or their information rusty. T2 is for someone more committed, while T3 leads into specialist texts and autobiographies you may not need or may pounce upon as treasures, from how medieval armour really was structured for lightness and flexibility to an authentic trip to Japan in the late 1800s, with never a samurai or ninja in sight, and never a bathtub—which of course you won't need if no one in your novel wear armour or goes to Japan.

A small number of e-texts appear on the site. HNC features a variety of essays, from general purpose ones on how to get into research, whether you need a research trip, and free libraries online, to words and catch-phrases marked as to when they were used (to avoid pouring modern Americanisms out of your medieval or Victorian characters), and a number of period-specific ones, such as what wearing a true Victorian corset is like.

A recent addition are map pages. Finding a period map, whether from the time or a modern construction, can be a trial. They provide a great many, with links to other map sites.

As well, they have an informal e-list for historical novelists to get together on and hammer out research or marketing problems. It is not a workshop or critique group, but yo may be able to connect with a critique partner here.