There are some fundamental vocabulary problems at work here. That is because people do not use the same words to mean the same things.

Thus:

When people talk about a “historically accurate book,” they can mean any of the following:

1. an attempt to recreate a period piece, in which the author mimics the formal sentence structure and word choice of Regency-era works.
2. a book, set in historical times, where the author gets all of the major (e.g., plot-dependent) details right, and the vast majority of the minor ones.
3. a book, set in historical times, wherein the author demonstrates that she has done her homework by including as much detail as possible.
4. a book, set in historical times, wherein the characters adhere firmly to the strictures of their time, without any deviation, no matter their (otherwise historically accurate) motivations.

I have heard books decried as “not historically accurate” or “wallpaper historicals” for failure to meet any of the above 4 qualifications.

I attempt to write books that are historically accurate as per definition 2. My personal taste does not run to books written to definitions 1, 3, and 4, although there is clearly a market for those books as well.

Right now, apropos Sarah F.’s post on Dear Author, there is a massive discussion ranging on twitter about historical accuracy. I think 95% of the disagreement is that those who are claiming historical accuracy is less important are talking about books of the 1 and 3 variety, and those who are in favor are talking about books of the 2 variety.

Some examples:

• I got to hold–hold and handle–the rolls containing the oaths of office of all city officials. I wanted to see what form the oaths took. These were 200 year old pieces of parchment. Yes, actual parchment, not paper. It was amazing.
• There was a massive book containing nothing except parking tickets circa the 1840s, which, while printed on thick paper, gave me a wave of nostalgia for present times: Dear John Sheppy, you left your wagon in the street for two hours, and caused an obstruction; appear at the Council House and pay a fine of up to 40 shillings.
• There was the book of informations laid in the Petty Sessions. Petty Sessions deal with small crimes. You know the type; hitting your wife, assaulting a constable, stealing pigeons, running away from apprenticeships and the like. Out of around 800 informations laid in the book I looked at, 4 were dismissed; the others were convicted. The punishments were usually either the paying of a fine and/or imprisonment; the normal term was about 7 days, but they went up to 6 weeks hard labor (that one was for exposing ones person), and were as low as a fine of 5 shillings for being drunk in public. Of the four instances where charges were dismissed, two of the defendants had obvious indications of wealth: One had hired a lawyer (there was a cross examination listed in the book), and the other made note in talking of his defense that he had “his gig waiting” during the supposed assault on the constable. Of the other one, one was accused of animal cruelty, and the other of breaking a window. For that last one, the court clerk, clearly knowing what to expect, had already written “convicted” on the line, and had to cross it out.See? That first line–C-squiggle-squiggle-loop–is the law hand abbreviation for “convicted.” I saw a lot of those. If you squint, you can read the line just above it, which shows his defense (or, as they spelled it, defence): “It was accidentally done.”
• While we’re at it, I’ve always known that the Oxford English Dictionary, which gives the first use found in print, for various phrases is off, particularly for slang. That’s because most words are used in speech long before they are used in printed publications. This is particularly true for words that would have been considered obscene at the time: it would have been illegal to print them.But my margin so far has been around 10 years, maybe 15, depending on the word in question. I’m going to have to rethink that. The phrase in question is “bloody hell,” and the OED attests it first from 1886. But here we are in 1838, and the constable claims he’s been told to go to bloody hell. Now, I note that this is not quite the same thing as using “Bloody hell!” as an exclamation. Nonetheless–all the bloody hell naysayers should take note.

  Incidentally, I liked this court reporter best. His handwriting was legible and not spidery, he wrote fast (meaning that we got much more story when he wrote, instead of a few lines), and he didn’t stint from using language like “bloody hell,” unlike the lame reporter in the beginning who started to write “exposing his naked parts” and then crossed off “naked parts” and substituted “person.” Once I figured out that “afs–” was his abbreviation for assault, we were all good. I imagine from his handwriting that this dude was cute. (I know. He was probably 75 and bald. Awww.)

  I’ve blurred out most of the document because the rest of the tale is pretty darned good–it’s obvious that the defendant knows how to tell a story, and who knows? I might end up using this in some altered form!

• There was much, much more. But this was seriously awesome.

Caveat: I say all this as someone who really, really tries to get things right. Which is why I’m in England on a research trip right now. And I know that sounds sexy, but what it means is that I spent two hours today taking literally hundreds of photographs of the period maps in Bristol’s City Museum, and I will spend the vast majority of tomorrow at the Bristol Records Office, reading the City Recorder’s notebooks and notes from the Petty Sessions for the years in question. It’s why I spend hours with the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Historical Thesaurus in front of me when I’m in the revision stage, checking hundreds of words; and why I ask Franzeca Drouin to look over my manuscripts for a second eye to accuracy once I’ve given it my very best shot, because I know I still miss stuff.

(Caveat the second: In my upcoming book, my heroine wears night-rails not made from linen. But she has them specially made for a particular purpose; in fact, she usually wears linen. As I found a few records of night-rails of non-linen-fabric for the super-wealthy, this fell into the category of historically possible attire, although it’s not historically average. She could have done so. She was motivated to do so. It fit the story for her to do so.)

In any event, Kalen makes the following assertion:

To me, it seems ridiculous to even bother writing “historical fiction” (be it romance, mystery, whathaveyou) if the “historical” part is optional.

I don’t think that the “historical” part of my books is “optional.” I work very, very hard at it. But I also don’t think that the history is the point of my books, either. Or, rather: I think the past is a vehicle for the present.

When Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he wasn’t writing an indictment of Puritan hypocrisy. When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, he wasn’t trying to villify the people who ran the Salem Witch trials. And I am not trying to say that I am the next Hawthorne or Miller. But neither Hawthorne nor Miller were “ridiculous” even though they weren’t always historically accurate, and were not striving for historical accuracy. It would be bizarre to condemn The Crucible on the grounds that it was a wallpaper historical courtroom drama. That’s because Hawthorne and Miller weren’t trying to write period pieces. They were using the past as a safe space to discuss the present.

I write in the late 1830s/early 1840s. I do so not because I am completely enamored of early Victorian times, or because I think it is sexy or because I think that it has pretty clothing (because, actually, the clothing of the era is quite ugly). I’ve explained this elsewhere in greater detail, but I write in a time period where everything is changing: the notion of society, the meaning of community, even what things have value. Towns are breaking up; the industrial revolution is hitting hard, and nobody knows what tomorrow will look like. It’s a time of enormous uncertainty.

In other words, it sounds a lot like modern times.

Today, we know that the industrial revolution wasn’t as horrible as some feared (Mr. Milan, who is a Luddite, will contest this). We know that the democratization of society and the erosion of class boundaries was a good thing. We know that giving women more freedom worked out okay. It didn’t destroy the family. It didn’t lead to anarchy. My readers know that; I know that. And so the historical setting is a safe place to explore what it means when society, culture, community, and even basic notions of value all change drastically, with that unknown future hovering on the horizon, waiting to swallow your child’s inheritance.

I do a lot of research–hundreds of hours for every book. When departing (or even appearing to depart, which is the bigger problem) from history, I agonize over the questions for weeks. I care about being historically accurate, to the extent that it is consistent with the story I am trying to tell. But I’m not ashamed to admit that if it comes down to a question between the accuracy of the history, and the theme and message and feel of my book for the modern reader, I will pick the theme and message and feel of my book every single time.

I’m not writing period pieces. And that’s not ridiculous.

Imagine my wince of pain when the infinitely wise Franzeca Drouin pointed out that the OED does not list “breath-taking” until Mark Twain uses it in . . . 1880.  Ow.

Or, to use more historically inaccurate language: Fuck.(*)

A frantic search ensued for synonyms or near synonyms.  As the search drew on, I would have settled for things that might have looked like synonyms if viewed in extremely dim lighting.  And I was tempted.  I was sorely tempted.  Historical accuracy be damned; how many readers were going to notice that the word “breathtaking” is not period for 1844?  But down that road lies a million different historical inaccuracies, and once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny and turn your books into historicals breathtaking (ha ha) in their wallpaperishness.

Finally, I checked google books and found this.

Whew–breath-taking, figurative sense, 1831.  There are a few more in the 1830s to 1840 range.  And I am content, sitting at 1844.  This just goes to show that the OED is not omniscient.  Almost, but not quite.

*heaves giant sigh of relief*

–

* Fuck, of course, has been in use as a noun and a verb for ages–”I’m eager for a fuck” is period even though it sounds ridiculously modern to my ear, as is “he fucked her.”  But fuck as a general expression of dismay is not.  Alas.

But here’s a question.

Why is it, in historicals, that all carpets are Aubusson, all vases are Sevres (or, more precisely, “precious Sevres”), and all gowns are made by Worth?

I mean, I realize these are excellent manufacturers, but not all purses have to be Prada and some stiletto heels are made by manufacturers other than Mahnolo Blahnik.  The only thing more cliched than a Sevres vase is a precious Sevres vase, and the adjective is only applied to make the reader wince when it is tossed against a wall in a fit of pique–presumably, because the man doing the tossing has been trying to get a hold of a vase by another manufacturer and is furious at the stranglehold monopoly that Sevres keeps in Regency times.  Damn those vase cartels!

I want options!

All righty then–it’s back to my broken Grecian urn–which is my non-Sevres vase.

It’s entitled Women, Property, and Personhood (not the title that’s showing up on the Conference List), and it’s a short look at the legal development of property rights in England (and only England, sorry, Scotland has its own courts of equity and I’ve never researched anything from them), with a particular look at how they pertain to women’s property rights and personhood. As this is a writer’s conference, the focus is on plots rather than particulars of the law.

You are probably thinking something like this: “Oh great. I would rather be bludgeoned to death with a baby seal then attend, at 9:45 in the morning no less, a workshop that delves into legal details from three centuries ago. Well, look at it this way: This workshop is 55 minutes long. The subject matter could fill a small room chock full of microfiche. If I tried to convey a great amount of legal detail, (a) I would run out of time before I hit 1400 A.D., (b) you would all fall asleep, and (c) there would be no guarantees I would get to material that would be useful to you.

So what I’m doing, instead of conveying vast amounts of factual detail, is giving a very broad overview of how people thought about property throughout history. I’ll explain how these give rise to a number of rules, and I’ll hand out a common checklist of “ways to figure out if you may be making a legal error.” The last half of the workshop will be hands on–we will examine wills and devises from actual romance novels, and I’ll show you how to use my checklist to figure out whether they can (or can’t) hold up, and if they can’t hold up, I’ll explain ways that the author could have achieved the exact same plot points.

In short, it’s designed to be useful for writers, to facilitate your plots (rather than to pull them to pieces), and to be more fun than you ever imagined law could be. Which, believe it or not, is pretty darned fun!

So come, and win various and sundry prizes, such as CDs containing scans of complete legal treatises (some of which are not available on Google Books), and never-seen-before-dare-you-to-wear-them buttons promoting the coolest, legally-accuratest Regency-set trilogy that 2009 will see!