So maybe this is a bit of a softball question, but: which authors (directors, showrunners, etc.) do the panelists feel do a good job of representing the past accurately? Who should we be reading/watching/etc if we want historical fiction with an emphasis on the historical?

Welcome to the ‘Who Tells Your Story?: (Mis)representing the Past in Works of Historical Fiction’ conference Q&A Panel. Unlike most traditional forms of history writing, historical fiction offers immersion into the lived experience of what the past was ‘like’. Through a blend of imagination and historical knowledge, it’s possible to bring the past alive on the page or screen and offer a way for wider audiences to engage with historical settings and characters. This panel reflects on the complexities involved in analyzing and discussing these works with a particular focus on what it means to be realistic, how historical fiction shapes our understanding of historical figures and events, and both the joy and pitfalls involved when fans use historical fiction as a launchpad for their own research.

Moderated by Dr. Stuart Ellis-Gorman (u/Valkine), this panel explores how the historic past is represented (and mostly misrepresented) in historical fiction and whether audiences accept these representations as factual or accurate.

It Features:

Hilary Jane Locke (/u/HistoryHilaryPhD) presenting her paper ‘“I can be put off instantly if something is not accurate”: Examinations of Historical Fiction Audiences and Historical Knowledge.’

It is often discussed by historians and in opinion pieces alike that audiences use historical fiction texts – novels, films, and television – to generate knowledge of history, regardless of how accurate these texts are or not. Television shows like The Crown (Netflix 2016-) and Game of Thrones (2013-2018), for example, generate a plethora of opinion pieces about how audiences react and absorb information about historical settings and accuracy in these texts. Historical novels are also a popular form for accessing historical knowledge; the ‘History’ category on Good Reads is usually intermingled with historical fiction titles. It is therefore important to consider the power that historical fictions have in representing a sense of history to audiences. As Megan O’Grady wrote for the New York Times Style Magazine in 2019: ‘it’s generally fallen to [...] the women, the colonized or enslaved [...] to subvert conventional understandings of [history], to make up for the burned or redacted documents, the missing transcripts and the experiences that were never recorded in the first place’. In doing so, historical fictions also provide history in an accessible format for audiences who may be unlikely to choose a dense non- fiction text.

But how do audiences respond to these texts? Are they inclined to take them at face value, or is there more complexity in how the relationship between historical fiction and historical knowledge is formed? By utilizing preliminary results from surveys and interviews conducted with audiences for my PhD research, this paper will discuss how audiences use historical fictions to form their perceptions of history, as well as how historical fiction shapes the way notions of accuracy and authenticity are understood.

Kathryn H. Stutz (/u/kathrynstutz) presenting her paper ‘Lady Franklin’s Legacy, or, the Fictional Afterlives of a Polar Explorer’s Widow.’

In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin sailed from England into the Canadian Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage through to the Pacific Ocean; neither Franklin nor any of his 128 crewmen returned home alive. Although Franklin’s vanished expedition has been the subject of extensive historical scholarship over the last hundred and seventy years, the bereaved families impacted by the disaster have remained mostly relegated to the margins of history. The main exception is Lady Jane Franklin—the captain’s wife, the Penelope of England—who left behind a detailed legacy partly consisting of numerous letters persuading others to search for her absent husband (Elce 2009).

Despite her mythologized depiction as an indomitable and indefatigable wife, Lady Franklin’s life without her husband was initially a difficult affair, plagued by issues both personal and financial that often threatened to shatter her ideal self-representation as a proper and demure Englishwoman (Price 2018). Several biographies and articles have examined this period following the disappearance of Sir John, but discrepancies between Lady Franklin’s public and private faces have continued to puzzle modern readers of the historical record (Alexander 2013, Brazzelli 2020, Elce 2019, McGoogan 2006).

To reconstruct the experiences of Lady Franklin, many have turned to fiction. Scholars have mapped out Lady Franklin’s fictional afterlives for the years leading up to 1845 (Johnson 2015, Kohlke 2013, Lai-Ming 2012), but depictions in modern media concerning her life as a widow have not yet been considered. This paper bridges this gap by examining (1) novels (Elce 2018, Simmons 2007), (2) poetry (Schroeder 2020, Solway 2003), and (3) television (Kajganich and Hugh 2018) in order to show how viewing the full array of recent representations of Lady Franklin’s later years can illuminate the tensions that held together this Victorian woman’s carefully woven self-image.

Edmund Wuyts (/u/EdmundYsbrandt) presenting his paper ‘Sexual Skylarking: From Speculation to Historical Truth in Franklin Expedition Scholarship.’

In 1845, Sir John Franklin set sail with two ships in an attempt to find the illustrious Northwest Passage to the Pacific, only to never emerge from the Arctic. When explorer Leopold McClintock returned to England in 1859, ending a decade-long search for the missing expedition, he carried with him the Victory Point Record, one of the few surviving expedition documents, which sealed the fate of Sir John and his companions. Whilst he may have solved an important part of the mystery, McClintock found few answers concerning why and how the disaster happened. Those questions would inspire academic scholarship, amateur research, and fictional works up to the present day.

Most influential among these fictional works is AMC’s The Terror, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Simmons. Released in 2018, the show has since amassed a steadily growing following of fans who have been inspired to do their own research into the historical context of the show.

This paper examines the circular exchange of information that happens between published historical research and fandom spaces, which have fewer rules constricting truth compared to traditional research methods. New insights into the historical events influence how the show’s characters and events are perceived, whilst the show allows researchers to look at the historical figures in ways that break away from how they are usually seen, and creates interest in lesser known people, like the lower class members of the crew. However, because the show made use of many well-known sources and literature at the time, this has created a vicious circle where speculation from the show comes to be considered as historical truth, as people rely on said sources and literature to do their own research, thereby missing corrections and new discoveries.

Thank you for the great panel everyone! I really enjoyed the roundtable discussion at the end of this between all the panelist, real good fun! The effect history has on media and vice versa has been something of a theme in a couple of panels, but I'm interested in getting your thoughts on how effective different mediums are for showing or teaching history. Do books have a slightly better way of allowing for historical accuracy? Are TV shows restricted by what they can do to much?

And when it comes to that, do you have anything you'd like to see done in any of the mediums (your choice) to help promote more historical accuracy?

When it comes to tv shows or other media, is the thirst for historical accuracy new? Is it something people have always wanted and we've just gotten 'better' at having shows based on history?

Thanks for this panel! I'm only part way through the recording but wanted to get a question in while you're doing the AMA-

I'm reminded of the public history world where people will complain "I didn't come to Monticello to learn about slavery. I know its bad, you don't have to tell me" and the problem guides will face trying to tell an accurate history versus the history people want to hear. Can you talk about tensions between historical reality and the importance of accuracy against escapism in fictional works/worlds, especially regarding traumatic and heavier subject matter?

This was a good panel, thank you. When it comes to history being represented in fiction, how much of an impact does myth making behind the events have, especially on the fiction? Especially thinking about the Franklin expedition, how much of it is purpose made myth making and how much accidental?

Thank you for your papers all, this was a really interesting panel to watch!

This might be slightly more directed at Hilary, but I was wondering to what extent you think popular audiences actually are able to judge the 'accuracy' of works of fiction. It seems like fiction can often repeat and reinforce inaccurate stereotypes and tropes, so how far are popular audiences knowledgeable and able to critically evaluate fiction? For example, could a book set in medieval Europe where people have consistent access to clean water be rejected as inaccurate despite reflecting the current academic understanding of the period?

This is a question for /u/HistoryHilaryPhD, and I apologise if I missed it in your talk, but did you ask any questions of people on what kind of history they read (popular press vs academic press, for instance) in order to judge the accuracy of the historical fiction they read?

I'm also wondering if there were any significant differences in genre or enjoyment of inaccurate historical fiction along gender lines. You mentioned that your respondents were mostly women, but were women or men more tolerate of inaccuracies in historical fiction, or was it about the same?

One thing that stood out to me throughout the discussion was the perpetual focus on "accuracy". A lot of the research in historical game studies since at least 2013 has been fighting against accuracy as the primarily useful lens - it has been replaced by various proposals of "authenticities" or some such based on both research and audience expectations or seeking ways to completely sidestep and move past that framework to ask other questions. Obviously, it is a very difficult thing to move past, and the field has been kind of stewing in its own debates on the value of accuracy vs other metrics of judging historical games, but I think there are very few people on the academic side of the discussion now that thinks of received histories in videogames primarily on a scale from "accurate" to "inaccurate". Is that a debate that is also happening in historical fiction, and if so, is there an angle or direction you'd like historical fiction studies to start moving in?

Relatedly, u/HistoryHilaryPhD, your research talked a lot about how audiences want "accuracy" in their historical fiction. Do you have any insights into how they are evaluating if something is accurate, and whether they are (forgive the bluntness of my phrasing) any good at that evaluation?

What motivates you to write on these kind of topics? Is there a personal connection, a larger goal, or just cause you find it neat?

I expect that every historian will have a different response to this question, but when it comes to encouraging a consumer to engage properly with history, how important do you feel it is for a work of historical fiction to focus on entertaining versus accurately representing history? In what ways do you feel it is acceptable or appropriate to twist historical fact in the name of potentially making said consumers more engaged and interested in learning more about the subject matter?