Historical Fictionistas discussion

Masters of Historical Fiction

This is the second part of the 2013 HFU challenge. You must complete all BA degree tasks before you will be awarded the masters degree. Please consult the general rules in the BA thread .
You may use the same reporting thread for the more advanced degrees.

The purpose of the Masters in historical fiction is to have exposure of the different sub-genres of historical fiction and to look at how the historical fiction genre has changed over the years.

The Historical Novel Society (HNS) uses a classification of sub-genres as outline by Sarah Johnson. Sarah is the author of Historical Fiction II: A Guide to the Genre, a professor of library science and one of the editors on the Historical Novel Society site. For more details on the sub-genre definitions, see Guide to Historical Fiction Sub-genres . You can use the HNS website to find books by doing a search by genre.

Reminder: All works for the masters degree are works of historical fiction. You may not use any books that you have already used for the BA tasks.

Task Requirements

Sub-genres: (14 books in total)
These are the following sub-genres outlined by the HNS with the number of books tagged with the sub-genre as of 2/11/13 in parentheses:

 Traditional Historical Novel
 Multi-period Epics (80 books)
 Sagas (423 books)
 Western Historical Novel (281 books)
 Historical Mysteries (1108 books)
 Romantic Historical Novels (1006 books)
 Historical Thriller (214 books)
 Historical Adventure Novels (670 books)
 Literary Historical Novels (630 books)
 Christian Historical Novels (296 books)
 Time-slip Novels (85 books)
 Alternate History (41 books)
 Historical Fantasy Novels (80 books)

See below for the reporting rules:
• Pick one sub-genre and read 5 books from that sub-genre.
• Read 1 book from 9 other categories in the list.

Publication (6 books in total)
Read 1 HF book published in
• the 1800’s
• 1900-1930
• 1931-1960
• 1961-1990
• 1991-2010
• 2011-2013


Added on 2/11/13
Sub-genre Verification: If I can't tell obviously from the book description then the rules for determining if a book meets the criteria for sub-genre categorization are as follows:
* Tagged by the HNS website OR
* Tagged on Goodreads by at least 5 users in the genre section of the book's main page. The genre that I am looking for is the sub-category of HF above so romance, western, christian, etc. It does not need to say historical mystery, just mystery. I will accept literature or literary fiction for the literary HF, and time travel for time-slip.
* In addition, for the literary historical fiction, I will accept any historical fiction book that is on one of these two lists: 1001 Books Before You Die or Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read
* Traditional HF is a "everything else" bucket there is not a specific validation process.

This is going to be great, some lovely planning lying ahead, thank you Jo-Lene!
After having a very quick look at my TBRs, under what sub-genre would this book be placed? There's not much info on GR, and according to Amazon.com it was published in 2012 and takes place in spain in the 1870s. My guess is Traditional Historical Novel?
The Winemaker by Noah Gordon

JoLene, I checked out the Sarah Johnson's Guide to HF sub-genres and it looks like you skipped Historical Adventure Novels. Could you please put it back, I'd love to read some Sharpe and Hornblower for this challenge. Thanks.

@Shannon, I'm afraid that if GoodReads or HNS don't have the book listed, than you can't use it for the challenges as I need to have some way to verify the book. I will add that to the rules. It does look like a traditional HF.

@Zuzana, thanks for the catch --- one of my favorite genres as well!

I'm going to need some help on identifying which books go into which genre, and unforunately, the links don't work, except historicalnovels.info

Does the degree have to be completed in 2013 or will it extend into 2014?

To clarify, the book's sub-genre must either be listed as such on GR or HNS or the Guide to Historical Fiction Sub-enre's link. Is this correct?

It took me over an hour to locate some Multi-period Epics in the HNS website, so I created a list of such under Listopia on Goodreads.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/32...

Since I could only add 5 books, feel free to add your own. We could assist each other in research this way.

JoLene, if this is not allowed, just let me know.

Holly wrote: "It took me over an hour to locate some Multi-period Epics in the HNS website, so I created a list of such under Listopia on Goodreads.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/32...

S..."

Thank you!

Is anyone else having trouble with the links???? They work for me.
There is a recommendation thread that you can ask for specifics if you are having trouble.

@Maureen, this time-frame for this challenge is 2013. However, the threads will stay up so you can extend later, but I will not be checking.

@Holly, great idea about the listopia. You may want to post in the recommendations thread to get people to add. For the sub-genre, I will look at the HNS classification and the GR genres --- but also the book description. So if it's obvious from the description, that is fine as well.

Searching on the HNS website: In the upper right corner, if you click on the genre tag, it brings up the list of sub-genres. Click on the one that you want and it will bring up a list of books with that tag.

I didn't have any trouble with the links.

The HNS link worked. I found some great books on that list that I already had on my to read list (a personal goal this year is to reduce my to read list).

I was going to mark the books as either HNS classification, historicalnovel.info classification, or GR classification to make it a little easier for you JoLene.

any ideas on finding HF published in certain decades? the HNS link was very helpful for the genre search, but HNS and other sites don't sort by published date - specifically I'm having problems finding ideas for the 1900-1930 and 1931-1960 dates

Carla wrote: "any ideas on finding HF published in certain decades? the HNS link was very helpful for the genre search, but HNS and other sites don't sort by published date - specifically I'm having problems fin..."

I googled Books published in the 1940s etc. Also found for 1900-1930 One of Ours. Got it free on Kindle. Also 1930-60 Elswyth Thane Williamsburg series.

Zuzana wrote: "JoLene, I checked out the Sarah Johnson's Guide to HF sub-genres and it looks like you skipped Historical Adventure Novels. Could you please put it back, I'd love to read some Sharpe and Hornblower..."

And don't forget Baroness Orczy! ;)

A question. It may have been addressed b/f and I apologize if it has. I'm doing the BA in Literature. If I want the Masters do I have to first do the BA in History? I'm guessing so. And if I want to can I do the literature then add the requirements for the History and get two BA's? Does this make sense? And can I do it all in one year...well I don't know but I'm loving this challenge so much.

You need to do the B.A. first.

@Barbara, you can get the BA in either the history or literature --- similar to real life, sometimes people go back for different degrees :-D

So if we get a BA in history and also want one in literature, do we only need one set of the general requirements (will apply to both BA's)?

Carla wrote: "any ideas on finding HF published in certain decades? the HNS link was very helpful for the genre search, but HNS and other sites don't sort by published date - specifically I'm having problems fin..."

Another HF author from 1900's-1960's is
Georgette Heyer

@Sandra - I suppose if you want to do both, you can use the same general requirements.

I added some additional clarification based on some of the questions that have come up.
* Added links to the sub-genre listings on the HNS website so that it is easier to find books that qualify
* Clarified how I will validate the genres.

Also, I will be travelling tomorrow and on vacation for about a week. Please expect some delay in responding to questions.

At HNS if you search for a title, where do you find the sub genre? For example, are The Godfather, Roots and Gone Wirh the Wind onside red sagas? I didn't see them in the 400+ sagas there.

Oops, you can't search for titles at HNS. So where on GR do you find sub genres?

@Sandra, when you search for a book and bring up the review, there is detail information on the right side of the screen which lists how they have tagged the book.

As an example, they have tagged Gone with the Wind as romance. Some older books are not listed because the site is relatively new.

Jolene, are you talking about HNS? I don't see where you can search for a book. So GWTW is not HF :(?

Some books come up there- the Godfather does not. BTW, GR has GWTW as HF!

Roots doesn't come up either - weird.

@Sandra -- you can search for a title on the HNS website. There is a grey box just under the green menu bar. All books on the HNS site are historical fiction, and it has GwtW tagged in the romance sub-genre.

On GR, if you go to the book page for a book, there is a section called genres on the right side of the page. This is actually determined by the shelves that people place the book. I will look for the sub-genre name in this list --- so for example, the book must meet our definition of historical fiction AND also have the genre of western to qualify for the western historical fiction sub-genre.

So when you say a book must be tagged by at least 5 users, you mean at GR? And since GWTW has the sub genre of romance at HMS it can't be used for Saga, right? At HMS is where it must have the correct sub genre, then, and if its not there (like Godfather or Roots) I can't use them for saga, right (or even at all)?

Clarification :) The goodreads genre list does not need to say historical western, it can be listed as western and if it meets the HF criteria it is good And, I get what you are stating Sandra, does the HFN site trump the goodreads genre list?

Enjoy your vacation btw....:D

I'm getting kind of confused...

@Sandra --- the HNS site is not going to have every single HF book out there; the society has only been reviewing books for about 4 years or so; they have done some back catalog, but not all.

It is Goodreads that must have at least 5 people mentioning that sub-category so: adventure, romance, western, saga, epic, christian, thriller, mystery, etc

HNS does not trump --- I will accept either and in some cases, if I am familiar with the work, I will accept it such as Roots for a saga. I'm not sure that Godfather meets the criteria for historical fiction. Over 50% of the action must take place before 1919 (since it was published in 1969)--- my knowledge from the movie makes me think that this criteria isn't met.

So, you have just referred us to HNS for the sub genre ideas, but we aren't limited to those books, right? I started looking at their lists and feel like they've left a lot of classic HF out, and not many are on my TBR list.

This should be fun!

Ok....thank you. I got it now. I think I was thinking too hard, lol, trying to find historical sagas as a shelf on gr. I think the sagas and the epics will be harder to find on gr because they are not a shelf many use.

@Melodi --- no, you are not limited to what is on HNS site.

@Kristine -- yes, sagas and epics aren't popular shelves, but hopefully, they are easy to tell from the book description: sagas focus on a family where epics focus on a place --- both span larger time periods

thank you Christina & Holly, I will check those out

There is an ebook The Bride Price that involves a modern woman being pulled back into the Civil War. I was hoping this would work for Time-Slip. I'm not sure of length which is another reason I wanted to get it verified.

Kristine wrote: "Ok....thank you. I got it now. I think I was thinking too hard, lol, trying to find historical sagas as a shelf on gr. I think the sagas and the epics will be harder to find on gr because they a..."

Actually I started to make a list of sagas last night and stumbled upon many lists on GR, but epics and saga's seem to be put together...here is one of the better ones

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/71...

JoLene wrote: "@Melodi --- no, you are not limited to what is on HNS site.

@Kristine -- yes, sagas and epics aren't popular shelves, but hopefully, they are easy to tell from the book description: sagas focus o..."

Thank you for giving an easy definition of saga and epic...I personally get confused of the two.

And thanks Lisa...two I read years ago were

Evergreen and The Thorn Birds

@April, Bride Price works and seems to be 252 pages.

@Diane, sorry - it must meet our definition of historical fiction.

JoLene - thanks for all of your work putting this together. I think I have found all 20 of my books for this part of the challenge. I think I have almost as much fun finding the books to match the task as I do reading them - well, maybe not quite as much.

The good thing is out of the 20 books - I used 17 books I already own. I only had 3 to get - and I got one of those from PBS so just two to go.

Looking forward to putting my books together! I do have a question though. I started looking through some of the lists, and noticed that some of the books on the HNS site tagged as "epic" don't look to be multi-period epics. (Ex: Mistress of Rome, which I may read for another challenge I'm doing). Do we need to make sure it fits the category, even if it's tagged that way on the site?

Thanks, JoLene!

If you know that it doesn't really fit, than you should use something else. Unfortunately, if I haven't personally read it ---- I will default to using the HNS site.

I haven't read it yet, but from the description, I'd say it's more historical romance than epic. I'll just try to use my best judgment. :)

Just verifying this as an HF fantasy - Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. 191 people have listed it as fantasy on the GRs page. 49 listed it as HF. I was worried about the HF part but checked more thoroughly and Wikipedia says it is set around the turn of the century (20th) so Victorian era. I figured that took care of the requirements but since it was not on the HSN site, I just wanted to verify.

Yes, that works

Does the masters also need to be completed in 2013?

The HFU challenge is for 2013, all degrees. However this is mostly self- regulating and we will keep the threads up.