The Journal of Historical Fictions
published by the Historical Fictions Research Network
Volume 6, Issue 2: “Introduction” by Stephanie Russo, p. 1
Welcome to Volume 6.2 of the Journal of Historical Fictions! I have now been Editor of the Journal for twelve months, and it has been an honour and a privilege seeing all your submissions. I encourage all members of the Historical Fiction Research Network, and all scholars interested in historical fictions generally, to submit an article.
This edition brings together three articles from an exciting group of scholars. What unites these papers is a contemplation of what historical fiction means now. These papers explore how historical fictions reveal much about our anxieties and our interests, and how the past can be put to use in the present moment.
Valerie Schutte’s paper explores a series of novels about the Tudor painter Susanna Horenbout. Little known today, Michelle Diener’s novels reclaim the story of this remarkable woman. Schutte’s work places these novels into a long lineage of historical fiction by women that aims to bring to light long-forgotten women’s stories, and argues that Diener fashions Horenbout into a feminist ancestor for women and girls today.
Historical fiction novelist and scholar Kim Swivel’s article reflects upon her own creative practice, and how the process of historical research has shifted over the course of her career. The impact of technology on the research process has, she argues, resulted in not only a shift in the process of writing historical fiction, but a shift in the form itself. Swivel’s article brings together creative praxis, a meditation on the relationship between novelist and reader, and a contemplation of the value of magical realist elements into historical fiction, and is sure to be of interest to scholars and practitioners alike.
Helena Gayoso’s fascinating paper explores the role of ekphrasis in a spate of retellings of the Clytemnestra myth. Anybody interested in historical fiction would surely have noticed the contemporary interest in novelistic renderings of Greek mythology in recent years, following the publication of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles in 2011. Gayoso explores how the myth of Clytemnestra has been used as a way of thinking through women’s agency in the classical world, and focuses specifically on the ekphrastic engagement with frescoes in Jennifer Saint’s Elektra (2022), Susan C. Wilson’s Clytemnestra’s Bind (2023) and Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra. Gayoso work weaves together classical mythology, the contemporary novel, classical reception, and the role of the gaze in her reading of these novels.
In 2026, we hope to launch a review section of the Journal, so please do be in touch if you have any titles you wish to review.
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