Echoes of the Eighteenth Century

Join Libricola in exploring how modern authors bring the eighteenth century to life through historical fiction.

Earlier this month, the Hub Town Tours blog considered how the Abolitionist and Suffrage movements inherited the American Revolution. When no actual participants were left living, the language of that first Revolution inspired and guided the later ones. Writings from earlier times connected people with the past.  

I love 18th-century writing, and I’ve read a lot of it. But I also enjoy how modern writers recreate it, and different writers approach the challenge differently. How to preserve the original flavor without letting the older language become distracting or obscure?  It’s about picking your spot along the spectrum between outright imitation and subtle suggestion, and then fully committing to the decision.

I thoroughly enjoy fiction that offers small or large windows into history. Some of my favorite authors who recreate the 1700s are mystery writers, who often feature real 18th-century people and events in their books.

Don’t come at me, Patrick O’Brian readers. I said what I said. 

Sherlock Holmes fans are familiar with his claim about Watson: “I would be lost without my Boswell.” (“I would be lost without my blogger,” for the Sherlock series fans.) Holmes was comparing Watson to James Boswell, friend and biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the few people who can honestly claim to be a towering literary figure. 

Lillian de la Torre wrote four books of short stories in which Boswell becomes the Watson to his friend Johnson, “Detector of Crime and Chicane.” These stories are pastiche on the highest level, and the language is beautifully adept. I mean, Crime and Chicane, come on!  De La Torre more or less founded the modern historical mystery genre with these books. 

She let go of some formality and patterns of high courtesy that original 18th-century writing contains, but she kept all its character and style. It’s authentic but lighter, a “carbonated” 18th-century style: the same language but with bubbles. 

These entertaining stories also engage with many aspects of 1700s English society, from hot-air balloons to highwaymen. In this 250th anniversary year, I’ve been rereading the stories with direct connections to the American Revolution. Johnson and Boswell, in an uneasy truce with fur-hatted Benjamin Franklin, strive to rescue his grandson from kidnappers. Pitted against waxwork artist and supposed spy Patience Wright, who has a message to get past them if she can, Johnson and Boswell may ultimately be thwarted. De La Torre was American, after all.  

Here are a few other series I recommend:

Bruce Alexander’s books feature Sir John Fielding, the “Blind Beak” magistrate of Bow Street. Fielding helped found the first professional police force in England. Fun and full of interesting characters and real events. 

David Liss wrote three mysteries about a fictional thief-taker (18th-century private eye). Denser and historically erudite, moody, gorgeous writing. Definitely not beach reading.

The series by Robin Blake about fictional county coroner Titus Cragg and Dr. Luke Fidelis. Detailed, good-humored, and in an uncommonly rural, small-town setting. Why have these not been adapted for the screen?