The Books That Got Me Started
15/02/08 14:09 Filed in: Article
I was asked for a list of my favourite books - an
impossible choice, as any reader knows. But here's
what I feel now. In a year, I'm sure the list will be
different.
KATHERINE by Anya Seton. I’m afraid to reread this one in case it’s not as wonderful as I remember from the age of 11 or 12. But whenever I mention it to other readers, I get back a fervent ‘Oh, yes!’ There’s a secret sisterhood out there of Katherine Swinford fans, all of us as teen-agers in love with John of Gaunt – a heart-throb across six centuries. Reading it, I understood for the first time that you could learn real history from riveting, colourful and gently erotic fiction. Then came,
THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey, in which a modern day detective re-examines the supposed villainy of Richard III and his alleged murder of the two princes in the Tower. Years later, Tey became the role model for what I try to do – to look closely at the facts ‘everyone knows are true’ and imagine what else might really have happened. Has every other historical novelist listed this book? I suspect so.
And,
THE BULL FROM THE SEA by Mary Renault. Renault takes her imagining a step farther, into explaining myth in human terms, in this case, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. I followed her example in my novel, QUICKSILVER, where I explore what a real-life werewolf might be, without the supernatural or the gothic. And what it might be like if you or I suddenly found ourselves turned into that werewolf.
THE ONES I READ NOW.
I think it’s a little dangerous to read other books in your own genre while actually writing, because it’s too easy to imitate, whether you mean to or not. Or to limit yourself to what others have done. Or to get discouraged by comparison. But, of course, I read them all, during the safe fallow times – Rose Tremain, Anthony Burgess (DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD), Tracy Chevalier, Sarah Dunant, Dorothy Dunnett, James Lee Burke writing about the American Civil War (WHITE DOVES AT MORNING) or anything else, for that matter. But the current queen of them all for me is Philippa Gregory, whose wonderful story-telling is underpinned by solid, historical scholarship that you can trust.
THE ONES I USE. My house is one huge sliding heap of reference books, but (painful choice!) here are a few that I’ve found particularly helpful.
While writing THE FIRE MASTER’S MISTRESS I was grateful for Antonia Fraser’s THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, both exhaustive and entertaining. And she confirms my experience that the ‘truth’ in history is a much more slippery beast than we tend to assume.
THE A to Z OF ELIZABETHAN LONDON (published by the London Topographical Society) is a detailed street map put together from a number of 16th century maps – invaluable when I want to know what used to be there instead of that modern bank head-quarters. I used it to help me build up my imagined worlds, in particular the Southwark ‘red-light-district’ of my heroine Kate Peach, on a base of reality.
For detailed first hand information about England in the 16th and 17th centuries, I use the diarists and chroniclers, like John Stow’s A SURVEY OF LONDON ((1598, but reprinted by Sutton in 1994 and 1997). And John Leland’s ITINERARY (put into modern English and edited by John Chandler, again published by Sutton, 1993).
And if you put on your most sceptical hat, you can have a delightful time reading THE VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE (My copy is was published by Cassell in 1886 and cost one pound in a charity shop.) Brilliant lies most of it, but also an insight into what many people believed at the time. Read it to learn where the Mouth of Hell is located and where to find men who carry their heads under their arms.
My time at Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company helped set my ear for the language - the period cadences, vocabulary and sense of comedy. I still try to see every Shakespeare play that I can and read not only his plays but those of Jonson, Marlowe, Dekker and Chapman. Their themes and subjects are often veiled references to contemporary events and can give us an insight into the popular opinion of what was going on.
For THE PRINCIPESSA, my latest book just published in England, I used THE LOST PALACE OF WHITEHALL (and a number of guide-books to northern Italy. WALKING IN ITALY (Lonely Planet) helped me work out how long it took people to get from one place to another before modern transport.
(I’m preparing a fuller list of reference books for my web site (christiedickason.com) for anyone who wants to know more about the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods.)
KATHERINE by Anya Seton. I’m afraid to reread this one in case it’s not as wonderful as I remember from the age of 11 or 12. But whenever I mention it to other readers, I get back a fervent ‘Oh, yes!’ There’s a secret sisterhood out there of Katherine Swinford fans, all of us as teen-agers in love with John of Gaunt – a heart-throb across six centuries. Reading it, I understood for the first time that you could learn real history from riveting, colourful and gently erotic fiction. Then came,
THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey, in which a modern day detective re-examines the supposed villainy of Richard III and his alleged murder of the two princes in the Tower. Years later, Tey became the role model for what I try to do – to look closely at the facts ‘everyone knows are true’ and imagine what else might really have happened. Has every other historical novelist listed this book? I suspect so.
And,
THE BULL FROM THE SEA by Mary Renault. Renault takes her imagining a step farther, into explaining myth in human terms, in this case, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. I followed her example in my novel, QUICKSILVER, where I explore what a real-life werewolf might be, without the supernatural or the gothic. And what it might be like if you or I suddenly found ourselves turned into that werewolf.
THE ONES I READ NOW.
I think it’s a little dangerous to read other books in your own genre while actually writing, because it’s too easy to imitate, whether you mean to or not. Or to limit yourself to what others have done. Or to get discouraged by comparison. But, of course, I read them all, during the safe fallow times – Rose Tremain, Anthony Burgess (DEAD MAN IN DEPTFORD), Tracy Chevalier, Sarah Dunant, Dorothy Dunnett, James Lee Burke writing about the American Civil War (WHITE DOVES AT MORNING) or anything else, for that matter. But the current queen of them all for me is Philippa Gregory, whose wonderful story-telling is underpinned by solid, historical scholarship that you can trust.
THE ONES I USE. My house is one huge sliding heap of reference books, but (painful choice!) here are a few that I’ve found particularly helpful.
While writing THE FIRE MASTER’S MISTRESS I was grateful for Antonia Fraser’s THE GUNPOWDER PLOT, both exhaustive and entertaining. And she confirms my experience that the ‘truth’ in history is a much more slippery beast than we tend to assume.
THE A to Z OF ELIZABETHAN LONDON (published by the London Topographical Society) is a detailed street map put together from a number of 16th century maps – invaluable when I want to know what used to be there instead of that modern bank head-quarters. I used it to help me build up my imagined worlds, in particular the Southwark ‘red-light-district’ of my heroine Kate Peach, on a base of reality.
For detailed first hand information about England in the 16th and 17th centuries, I use the diarists and chroniclers, like John Stow’s A SURVEY OF LONDON ((1598, but reprinted by Sutton in 1994 and 1997). And John Leland’s ITINERARY (put into modern English and edited by John Chandler, again published by Sutton, 1993).
And if you put on your most sceptical hat, you can have a delightful time reading THE VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE (My copy is was published by Cassell in 1886 and cost one pound in a charity shop.) Brilliant lies most of it, but also an insight into what many people believed at the time. Read it to learn where the Mouth of Hell is located and where to find men who carry their heads under their arms.
My time at Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company helped set my ear for the language - the period cadences, vocabulary and sense of comedy. I still try to see every Shakespeare play that I can and read not only his plays but those of Jonson, Marlowe, Dekker and Chapman. Their themes and subjects are often veiled references to contemporary events and can give us an insight into the popular opinion of what was going on.
For THE PRINCIPESSA, my latest book just published in England, I used THE LOST PALACE OF WHITEHALL (and a number of guide-books to northern Italy. WALKING IN ITALY (Lonely Planet) helped me work out how long it took people to get from one place to another before modern transport.
(I’m preparing a fuller list of reference books for my web site (christiedickason.com) for anyone who wants to know more about the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods.)