The best historical romance novels: authors and plot

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Authors of historical romance novels often enjoy well-deserved popularity with numerous fans. They manage to combine in their work the events that really happened with a beautiful romantic story that makes the novel interesting and attractive to a huge readership. In this article, we will talk about several books of this genre.

Gone with the Wind

The author of the historical romance novel "Gone with the Wind" is the American writer Margaret Mitchell. She published her famous book in 1936. This is one of the most famous bestsellers in the history of world literature. Six months later, the number of copies sold reached one million, in 1939 the novel was filmed.

In this work, events unfold over 12 years, from 1861 to 1873. This is a detailed and realistic story of the American Civil War, confrontationindustrial northern states to southern slave states.

The situation in the country at that time was such that it became unprofitable for northerners to keep slaves to work in factories, they began to make a choice in favor of civilian workers, only slaves were ideal for agriculture for southerners. When the North demanded the abolition of slavery, the southern states tried to establish their own state.

The plot of the novel

Mitchell is one of the best foreign authors of historical romance novels. The main character of her work is Scarlett O'Hara, who has an amazing ability to charm the representatives of the stronger sex.

Her love relationship unfolds against the background of the civil war that engulfed most of America in those years.

At the age of 17, she marries Charles Hamilton after the young man she was in love with announced that he was engaged to another girl.

At the very beginning of the Civil War, Charles dies of measles in a camp of southerners, before he even had time to be in battle. Scarlett becomes a widow at the age of 17, she has to wear mourning. But she is not going to end her life on this, her heart asks for love and passion, despite the fact that a bloody war is unfolding around.

The author of this love-historical novel M. Mitchell in 1937 received the Pulitzer Prize for it. Surprisingly, this is her only work in her career as a writer. Despite numerous requests and appeals from readers and publishers, she did not write another book.

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights is another popular historical romance novel. The author of this work is also a woman, the English writer Emily Brontë. This is also her only novel.

She managed to win the hearts of readers and publishers due to a well-thought-out and elaborate plot, in which she actively used innovative literary techniques. The features of her style are the narration of several storylines at once, attention to the details of rural life and life. All this is organically combined in Bronte with a romantic interpretation of natural phenomena, bright artistic images.

Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, became a classic of late Romanticism, a benchmark of early Victorian literature.

What is Wuthering Heights about

The author of the historical romance Wuthering Heights places his characters in the Yorkshire wastelands in 1801. Young Londoner Mr. Lockwood settles in a small provincial estate in search of solitude. From Starling Grange, he decides to pay a visit to a neighbor, Mr. Heathcliff, who is the owner of the Wuthering Heights estate.

Lockwood finds out that in addition to the owner of the estate, the widow of his son and Hareton Earnshaw live in the house. Relations between them are very tense.

The main character learns the history of this house. By writing this book, Bronte has become one of the best foreign authors of historical romance novels.

Memoirsgeisha

In 1997, American writer Arthur Golden published his most famous novel, Memoirs of a Geisha. In it, he tells in the first person the fictional story of a geisha who works in the Japanese city of Kyoto throughout the 20th century, before and after World War II. Although the story itself is fictional, it is based on real historical material, closely acquaints readers with the features and traditions of Japanese culture, especially with regard to geishas.

In 2005, the novel was filmed. The melodrama was directed by Rob Marshall and starred Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.

Author of beloved historical romance novel builds on the story of an entirely fictional New York University translator Jacob Haarhuis, who wrote a novel about geishas and was able to interview one of the most popular former geisha named Sayuri Nitta. It is she who tells the professor about all the features of her work.

Jane Austen

The list of foreign authors of historical romance novels that have earned worldwide recognition always includes the English writer Jane Austen. She lived at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, becoming one of the founders of British realism. Her writings were called "moral novels" by critics.

These are universally recognized masterpieces, which organically combine a simple plot and deep penetration into the psychology and soul of the characters, all this is accompanied by an ironic andoriginal English humor. Today, Austen's works are mandatory studied in all British schools and colleges, they are known all over the world.

One of the best historical romance writers has six major works: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey.

Roman "Emma"

The novel "Emma" Austin finished in 1815, it humorously describes the fate of a young woman who, with passion and enthusiasm, woo her friends and acquaintances.

The main character of this work is called Emma Woodhouse, she is the daughter of a we althy and we althy landowner, she does not care about mundane questions, she is a real dreamer in her soul. She devotes all her free time to organizing someone else's personal life.

At the same time, Emma herself is convinced that she will never be able to get married, so her destiny is to become a matchmaker for her many acquaintances and girlfriends. When everything goes according to her plan, life gives Emma a surprising and unexpected surprise.

This fascinating story is set against the backdrop of real historical events that took place in England at the beginning of the 19th century.

Charlotte Bronte

The author of "Wuthering Heights" Emily had two more sisters who became major writers, as a result of which their works were recognized as classics of Englishliterature.

Telling about popular authors of historical romance novels, one always remembers Charlotte Bronte. Her very first novel, "Jane Eyre", became the most famous work of the writer, which brought her worldwide fame. She graduated in 1847.

She also published the novels "Shirley", "Town" and "Teacher". Charlotte Bronte is one of the most talented and famous representatives of English realism and romanticism. She had an extremely impressionable and nervous temperament, according to the stories of acquaintances, she had an amazing ability to feel the personality and mood of a perfect outsider in order to understand his motives and actions.

With amazing truthfulness and beauty, she managed to convey everything she saw and felt. According to critics, often overly vivid images gave excessive melodrama to her works, and sentimentalism weakened the overall artistic impression of the novel. But all this was managed to level out thanks to life realism, which made all these shortcomings invisible as a result.

Jane Eyre

The novel "Jane Eyre" Charlotte Bronte wrote under the pseudonym Carrer Bell. It is narrated in the first person and takes place in northern England during the reign of George III.

The main character's parents die when she was a very young child. Her mother's brother, Mr. Reid, is raising her. At the beginning of the novel, the girlonly ten years old, she has poor he alth, a lively character, she is a very impressionable child, who at the same time is very closed due to circumstances, as she grows up in a strange house, and Mr. Reed, who once took her up, has recently died.

Jane grows up on an estate called Gateshead, which belongs to her aunt Sarah Reed. This is a selfish and domineering woman, who is a match for all her children, who are the cousins of the main character. She is treated unfairly by many. This attitude is explained by the fact that everyone in the family was dissatisfied with the marriage of her parents.

Jane's mother was a girl from a good and rich family, she married for love to a poor vicar. Because of this, everyone in the family, except for that same Mr. Reed, disowned her. She has a good relationship only with a maid named Bessie Lee.

Tensions between the relatives come to a head when John Reed crushes Jane's head until it bleeds, in response she throws her fists at him. Mrs. Reid, who happened to be nearby, punishes her by sending her to the so-called "red room". It was here that Mr. Reid died a few years ago. The girl is convinced that a ghost lives there, this is the worst punishment for her. She becomes ill and faints.

Such is the beginning of this captivating historical romance that made Charlotte Bronte world famous.

Elizaveta Dvoretskaya

Historical romance novels by Russian authors have become especially popular recently. There are many new authorswho explore this topic in detail.

One of them is the writer Elizaveta Dvoretskaya. She is fond of historical reconstruction of the early Middle Ages. This contributes to a realistic depiction of the features of the life of the heroes of that time, in her novels there are always a large number of reliable details.

It is precisely the era of the Middle Ages that her works are dedicated to. She has already released the Scandinavian series "Ship in the Fjord", consisting of 19 novels, several series of books about the Slavs and even Slavic fantasy.

Gunnhild, Bride of the North

One of the author's latest novels is Gunnhild, Bride of the North, which was published in 2018.

He tells the story of two noble Viking families who, after mutual insults, enter the warpath. The daughter of Olaf, the head of one of the families, decides to seek help from Queen Thure, their distant relative.

The charming Gunnhild almost immediately becomes a voluntary prisoner of her son Knut, while she herself increasingly pays attention to his younger brother Harald.