Beverley Southgate - History Meets Fiction

S ome few years ago, my friend the late Dennis Brown lent me a copy of Wyndham Lewiss novel Self Condemned. He thought that its representation of a Professor of History, so disaffected with his subject that he felt bound to resign his prestigious position, might be of interest; and so interesting did it in fact prove that I went on to read other works that revealed a similar concern with historical theorya subject that initially seemed an unlikely topic for writers of fiction, but later came to appear as almost obsessive. And one thing that particularly struck me in the course of my reading was that fictional representations of historians, insofar as these were conventional practitioners of their subject, seemed to be almost uniformly negative of ten depicted as nothing better than dry-as-dust, boring old pedants. And, as far as their subject was concerned, what emerged overall was an attitude highly critical towards traditional perceptions of both the nature and the assumed purposes of history.

This book, then, is in part a record of my own exploration of territory previously outside my own disciplinary purview a study that impinges on both history and fiction (and no doubt invites criticism from both specialist camps), but that is, I hope, grounded in my continuing interest in historical theory, or philosophy of history.

A particular feature here is the use of case studies or the examination of a number of specific novels at some length in order to show how writers of fiction have treated issues relating to history and historical theory and have frequently introduced and illustrated these in a helpfully accessible way. I hope that what is thus an essentially cross-disciplinary study will prove of interest to students and readers of both history and literature, as well as those concerned more generally with intellectual and cultural studies.

The relationship between history and fiction has always been contentious and sometimes turbulent, not least because the two have traditionally been seen as mutually exclusive opposites. From the earliest times, historians have defined their subject by direct reference to its absolute distinction from fiction: history is history precisely because it is