Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictitious plot takes place in the setting of particular real historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre, opera, cinema, and television, as well as video games and graphic novels.

An essential element of historical fiction is that it is set in the past and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the depicted period. Authors also frequently choose to explore notable historical figures in these settings, allowing readers to better understand how these individuals might have responded to their environments. The historical romance usually seeks to romanticize eras of the past. Some subgenres such as alternate history and historical fantasy insert intentionally ahistorical or speculative elements into a novel.

Works of historical fiction are sometimes criticized for lack of authenticity because of readerly criticism or genre expectations for accurate period details. This tension between historical authenticity and fiction frequently becomes a point of comment for readers and popular critics, while scholarly criticism frequently goes beyond this commentary, investigating the genre for its other thematic and critical interests.

Historical fiction as a contemporary Western literary genre has its foundations in the early-19th-century works of Sir Walter Scott and his contemporaries in other national literatures such as the Frenchman Honoré de Balzac, the American James Fenimore Cooper, and later the Russian Leo Tolstoy. However, the melding of historical and fictional elements in individual works of literature has a long tradition in many cultures, including both Western traditions (as early as Ancient Greek and Latin literature) and Eastern, in the form of oral and folk traditions (see mythology and folklore), which produced epics, novels, plays, and other fictional works describing history for contemporary audiences.

Introduction Definitions differ as to what constitutes a historical novel. On the one hand the Historical Novel Society defines the genre as works "written at least fifty years after the events described",Richard Lee. "Defining the Genre" , Historical Novel Society. while the critic Sarah Johnson delineates such novels as "set before the middle of the last [20th] century ... in which the author is writing from research rather than personal experience."Sarah L. Johnson. Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2005, p. 1. Then again Lynda Adamson, in her preface to the bibliographic reference work World Historical Fiction, states that while a "generally accepted definition" for the historical novel is a novel "about a time period at least 25 years before it was written", some people read novels written in the past, like those of Jane Austen (1775–1817), as if they were historical novels.

Historical fiction sometimes encouraged movements of romantic nationalism. Walter Scott's Waverley novels created interest in Scottish history and still illuminate it. A series of novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski on the history of Poland popularized the country's history after it had lost its independence in the Partitions of Poland. Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote several immensely popular novels set in conflicts between the Poles and predatory Teutonic Knights, rebelling Cossacks and invading Swedes. He won the 1905 Nobel Prize in literature. He also wrote the popular novel Quo Vadis, which was about Nero's Rome and the early Christians and has been adapted several times for film, in 1913, 1924, 1951, 2001 to only name the most prominent. Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter fulfilled a similar function for Norwegian history; Undset later won a Nobel Prize for Literature (1928).

Many early historical novels played an important role in the rise of European popular interest in the history of the Middle Ages. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame often receives credit for fueling the movement to preserve the Gothic architecture of France, leading to the establishment of the Monuments historiques, the French governmental authority for historic preservation.

The genre of the historical novel has also permitted some authors, such as the Polish novelist Bolesław Prus in his sole historical novel, Pharaoh, to distance themselves from their own time and place to gain perspective on society and on the human condition, or to escape the depredations of the censor.Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, pp. 299–302.

In some historical novels, major historic events take place mostly off-stage, while the fictional characters inhabit the world where those events occur. Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped recounts mostly private adventures set against the backdrop of the Jacobite troubles in Scotland. Charles Dickens's Barnaby Rudge is set amid the Gordon Riots, and A Tale of Two Cities in the French Revolution.

In some works, the accuracy of the historical elements has been questioned, as in Alexandre Dumas' 1845 novel Queen Margot. Postmodern novelists such as John Barth and Thomas Pynchon operate with even more freedom, mixing historical characters and settings with invented history and fantasy, as in the novels The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) and Mason & Dixon (1997) respectively. A few writers create historical fiction without fictional characters. One example is the series Masters of Rome by Colleen McCullough.

History History up to 17th century

Historical prose fiction has a long tradition in world literature. Three of the Four Classics of Chinese novels were set in the distant past: Shi Nai'an's 14th-century Water Margin concerns 12th-century outlaws; Luo Guanzhong's 14th-century Romance of the Three Kingdoms concerns 3rd-century wars which ended the Han dynasty; Wu Cheng'en's 16th-century Journey to the West concerns the 7th-century Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang.Andrew H. Plaks, Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987) In addition to those, there was a wealth of historical novels that became popular in the literary circles during the Ming and Qing periods in Chinese history; they include Feng Menglong's Dongzhou Lieguo Zhi (Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdoms), Luo Maodeng's Sanbao taijian xiyang ji, Sun Gaoliang's Yu Shaobao cui zhong quanzhuan, Chu Renhuo's Sui Tang yanyi (Romance of the Sui and Tang dynasties), Xiong Damu's Liang Song Nanbei Zhizhuan (Records of the Two Songs, South and North) and Quan han zhi zhuan, Yang Erzeng's Dong Xi Jin yan yi (Romance of the Eastern and Western Jin dynasties), the anonymous Ying Lie Zhuan, and Qian Cai's The General Yue Fei, etc.

Classical Greek novelists were also "very fond of writing novels about people and places of the past".Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, p. 27. The Iliad has been described as historic fiction, since it treats historic events, although its genre is generally considered epic poetry. Pierre Vidal-Naquet has suggested that Plato laid the foundations for the historical novel through the myth of Atlantis contained in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias. The Tale of Genji (written before 1021) is a fictionalized account of Japanese court life about a century prior and its author asserted that her work could present a "fuller and therefore 'truer version of history.

One of the early examples of the historical novel in Europe is La Princesse de Clèves, a French novel published anonymously in March 1678. It is regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel and as a great work. Its author generally is held to be Madame de La Fayette. The action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France. The novel recreates that era with remarkable precision. Nearly every character – except the heroine – is a historical figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great faithfulness to documentary records. In the United Kingdom, the historical novel "appears to have developed" from La Princesse de Clèves, "and then via the Gothic novel".J. A. Cuddon The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Penguin Books: London, 1999, p.383. Another early example is The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe, published in 1594 and set during the reign of King Henry VIII.

19th century

Historical fiction rose to prominence in Europe during the early 19th century as part of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, especially through the influence of the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, whose works were immensely popular throughout Europe. Among his early European followers we can find Willibald Alexis, Theodor Fontane, Bernhard Severin Ingemann, Miklós Jósika, Mór Jókai, Jakob van Lennep, Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Victor Rydberg, Andreas Munch, Alessandro Manzoni, Alfred de Vigny, Honoré de Balzac or Prosper Mérimée.. Jane Porter's 1803 novel Thaddeus of Warsaw is one of the earliest examples of the historical novel in English and went through at least 84 editions,Looser, Devoney. Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750–1850, pp. 157 ff. JHU Press, 2010. . Accessed 30 September 2013. including translation into French and German.Laskowski, Maciej. "Jane Porter's Thaddeus of Warsaw as evidence of Polish–British relationships ". Instytucie Filologii Angielskiej (Poznan), 2012. Accessed 26 September 2013.McLean, Thomas. "Nobody's Argument: Jane Porter and the Historical Novel ". Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Fall–Winter, 2007), pp. 88–103. University of Pennsylvania Press. Accessed 26 September 2013.Anessi, Thomas. "England's Future/Poland's Past: History and National Identity In Thaddeus of Warsaw ". Accessed 26 September 2013. The first true historical novel in English was in fact Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800).The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1985), ed. Margaret Drabble, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p.310.

In the 20th century György Lukács argued that Scott was the first fiction writer who saw history not just as a convenient frame in which to stage a contemporary narrative, but rather as a distinct social and cultural setting.Lukacs 15-29 Scott's Scottish novels such as Waverley (1814) and Rob Roy (1817) focused upon a middling character who sits at the intersection of various social groups in order to explore the development of society through conflict.Lukacs 31-38 Ivanhoe (1820) gained credit for renewing interest in the Middle Ages.

Many well-known writers from the United Kingdom published historical novels in the mid 19th century, the most notable include Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, George Eliot's Romola, and Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho! and Hereward the Wake. The Trumpet-Major (1880) is Thomas Hardy's only historical novel, and is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic Wars,Taylor xx when the town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon.