ABSTRACT
The genre of historical fiction itself has long been suspect. Once it was the province of writers who lived somewhere on the edge of more serious fiction, churning out potboilers about the Regency or ancient Rome; a good friend of mine refers derisively to “characters in togas.” Somewhat finer versions of the genre might be found in Sir Walter Scott or Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, or Leo Tolstoy. But even these writers felt queasy about portraying “real” characters-people who once lived and breathed. When Napoleon appears in War and Peace, for example, it is a cameo role. Tolstoy makes no effort to bring him to life.
