One of the things, though, is that what feels authentic for one person will not feel authentic for another. I think some of the hands-thrown-in-air attitude comes from the fact that readers who police historical “accuracy” often don’t know the facts themselves.

Oh, I agree. But I think the bickering that often occurs over particular details reflects the seriousness with which many readers take the historical aspects of HR, whether or not they know the “facts,” so to speak.

And this is something that I think is sort of disregarded when these debates come up. Authors (often rightly) feel they can’t win for losing (pick a more modern term and readers complain; pick a historically accurate term and readers complain). Readers feel they cannot trust the “history” in HR. And then there is the widespread investment we all seem to have in the HR category, inclusive of whatever marketing power such a label has, as well as the expectations of readers for that label.

My own feeling, which is fuzzy, anecdotal, and still kind of nascent in my own thinking about it, is that the reason readers get so nitpicky about historical details is that they don’t feel confident that what they’re getting is authentic history. And obviously I’m talking here about readers who indicate that the history is important to them, not the readers who prefer the so-called “wallpaper” historical. Also, I think that when readers are turned off by those small details, it’s symptomatic of a larger disconnect with the book. That may be an issue well beyond the history question, but in regard to the accuracy issue, I definitely think all the pesky detail debates are reflective of a strong reader investment in the history, and a desire for HR to respect and represent the historical aspects of the book seriously. For example, I think when the infamous “champagne flute” incident occurred, the author’s off-hand comment that she didn’t really think about the issue or research it turned some readers off and broke an implicit trust.

The contemporary filter question is still there, obviously, and I doubt there will ever be agreement over how much should be/needs to be modernized to engage contemporary readers, but I’m starting to think we need to take a closer look at whether/how readers are invested in the category of HR and what that means re. expectations & desires.

This is not a public forum, even though it appears to be one. I will not be able to effectively moderate over the next few days. This is an important, interesting topic, where feelings run high. We are already having superlatives thrown around that are potentially offensive. I simply will not have the internet access over the next few days to play effective host to this discussion.

I’m going to ask again that you please take this elsewhere.

IMO, cultural appropriation is both entwined and separate from the historical accuracy in historical romance debate. I write historicals set during the height of European (and American) Imperialism, and though the more I research this period the less likely I am to blithely write about English aristocrats. Yet, the more I research this period the more I love it because of its complexities (such as Ida B. Wells speaking against lynchings in the United States in a country [England] with its own set of racial issues), and I love to explore this complexity–which is why I do agree that historical accuracy and appropriation go hand in hand.

However, the aim of historical romance is not to critique the past. We no more ask writers of contemporary romance to write with an awareness of today’s social injustices than audiences of the 19th and early 20th centuries did their contemporary authors, and singling out historical romance as a vehicle for railing against all of the -isms of the past does history and the people who lived back then a disservice.

See, I studied history at University, and have done my own academic research, so I know that ‘historical accuracy’ is a nebulous thing, and so much that we accept as settled fact is nothing but. The hand of dead white men on history education lays heavy, even now. Unfortunately, a lot of writers and readers don’t have training in historical study, or understand the intense bias in popular sources, and therefore don’t understand how skewed their perspective is, and how whitewashed the narrative is.

Perhaps it’s asking too much from a genre which thinks western thinking and acting muslim Arab Sheiks run around in the Far East looking for pretty Christian virgins to marry, and looks down upon non-white leads, but I would love readers to be more questioning about Romances set in Regency England, propped up by British colonialism, or the Age of Sail, which was about exerting British domination over non-white territory. I would love them to accept and expect a sensibility about the impact on the actions of noble white heroines and fragile, privilege heroinces, upon the people and lands exploited and suppressed to provide the wealth which makes all the idle drawing room games so luxurious.

I’ve been debating this with one of your commenters in email, and she disagrees with me that issues of historical accuracy and historical appropriation are inextricably linked. However, depending on the setting, I believe you can’t meaningfully discuss one without the other, and ‘accuracy’ is a valueless term if you don’t want to critically examine your ‘canon’ sources.

I didn’t mean to start any off-topic discussion, and I’m not interested in talking about a particular book. I only mentioned it because Sarah’s post was sparked by her own review, and yet it and the discussion failed to mention a very important issue arising from that review.

Oh – and just to add on your point about ‘accurate’ details being unacceptable to modern audiences, despite their authenticity, Tamara Allen wrote a nice little post about that issue here:

http://tamara-allen.livejournal.com/13639.html

Ironically, Tamara is also a trained historian. It seems the more you know about a period, the more alienated you become from the readers who want to read about it because they ‘know’ it so well, they don’t want any departures from their vision of it!

I was deeply troubled by some of the comments on that review in defense of the book, and don’t think I could discuss it on this site in an even-handed, fair way. I managed not to participate in that discussion because it took off an hour before I got on a very, very long plane ride, and I had crap internet access for the weeks thereafter.

I have a post brewing on the broader questions raised, and I’ll get to it when I’ve had time to sort some stuff out internally.

But this is not a good place to discuss the merit (or lack thereof) of Bonnie Dee’s book.

Thanks for understanding.

It’s a wonderful romance. Why should this story have to be about the evils of imperialism? None of the main characters are native Africans (although there’s a smug, privileged character who has no qualms about exploiting his “inferiors” and who conveys the awfulness of colonial attitudes). I’ve read many historical romances set in the Victorian period that don’t have that focus, and I’ve never seen those books attacked as being offensive and worthless.

One of the things, though, is that what feels authentic for one person will not feel authentic for another. I think some of the hands-thrown-in-air attitude comes from the fact that readers who police historical “accuracy” often don’t know the facts themselves.

If you look at Kalen Hughes post, you’ll see at least two comments about “historical accuracy” in the comments that are flat wrong: the first, that there was nothing like “white flour” in the Regency, and the second that nursing as a profession flat out did not exist until Nightingale invented it in the Crimean war.

I know that the single biggest thing people have dissed me for in PROOF is my use of the word “shag”–which was actually first attested in 1783–but despite the dubious honor of being “right” about that, I’ve come to realize that it was wrong of me to use the word, precisely because while it’s accurate, it doesn’t feel authentic.

So I think sometimes authors think “Why bother?” because they are going to get dinged for historical inaccuracies even if they are accurate (the famous champagne flute discussion on AAR, IIRC, was one such). I’m not endorsing that attitude, mind, but I do understand it.

Along those lines, Deb: There is nothing not historical about contractions! Shakespeare used contractions. If you go far enough back that contractions are not in use, as you say, you’re dealing with a period where they simply were not speaking a language that people today would understand.

That being said, I do think that while all of this stuff is “knowable” the difficulty of knowability is… hard. I’ve talked to one very famous author, who does a lot of historical research, and she made the comment that Blackstone was basically unintelligible. Well, it’s not, at least not to me–but then, I’ve had a great deal of legal training, including a substantial component on trying to figure out what the law was in 1792 (I would like to thank Scalia and Thomas for making that possible–probably the only time I will write those words on this blog). But I can understand how it would be unintelligible for others, and it seems hard to tell people that in order to understand the law of the time they have to have my background.

Ideally, there would be an organization where people could share their expertise and get answers back on issues they really didn’t know about. The problem is, without policing of expertise, you get people answering questions when they really don’t know the answer, and can’t provide any sources–and their answers being taken as truth.

As it is, on some areas I feel like that other author did on Blackstone–I think I know the answer, I have tried to know the answer, but I don’t know everything I do not know–and that’s why I have someone who DOES know such things read my manuscripts with a very critical eye.

Although I prefer historical accuracy in settings, as a personal preference I like reading historical romances with natural-sounding dialogue, which is hard to pull off without using contractions. Another area where accuracy gets sticky is the issue of using terms that weren’t in common use during the period depicted. It’s possible to write 19th century settings using historically appropriate English words, but this is difficult if you go back further in time, because readers wouldn’t be able to understand the language. So as long as authors don’t use twentieth-century words, slang terms, or anything that feels jarring, I’m fine with them using, for example, a word attributed to 1680 in a book set in 1650. After all, if you go back far enough, there wasn’t an English language at all, so the whole question becomes moot. It’s more important that the language feel authentic to the reader.

One final point: history isn’t a black-and-white set of facts. It’s a fluid beast, composed of as much perception and interpretation as “facts.” Historical sources don’t always agree any more than eyewitnesses to the same traffic accident today always agree who’s at fault. The old adage that history is written by the victor is important to keep in mind when trying to determine exactly what happened in the past. Certain things accepted as convention are later challenged as new evidence comes to light and/or new interpretations of the evidence are put forth.

If an author is going to worry about champagne flutes, but not actually care that she’s reinforcing tired old tropes like the white man’s burden and so on, or not make the slightest effort to show a perspective on history that’s not white and male, then the book might be ‘accurate’ for certain values of the word, but it’s still essentially worthless and offensive.

Now that’s something I’d like to see discussed in Romancelandia. But I don’t think 99% of people involved even understand what cultural appropriation *is*, let alone cares about it.