Research

  • Historical fiction, Research, Writing, Writing Advice

    Researching historical locations for your novel

    Researching historical locations for your novel

    I’ve written posts in the past relating to how to research your novel locations online, and also how to avoid certain location problems in your fiction. In this post I wanted to address the specific topic of researching historical locations for your novel. I’ve touched on some tools for this before, but only in passing. The larger topic was left to a future post – which I’ve finally sat down to write!

    Travel writing

    If your novel is set in the 20th century or very late 19th century, you have the advantage of accessing travel guides from the period. In fact, the German publisher Baedeker started publishing travel guides in 1832. They also published in English and French. If you’ve watched or read A Room With a View, you might recall references to Baedeker from the English tourists in the story/film.

    Some of these old books can be bought secondhand. I have travel guides from the late 1920s for Berlin, London, Paris, and Northern Italy.

    • How to Be Happy in Berlin by John Chancellor
    • How to Be Happy in Paris by John Chancellor
    • London 1929 – Illustrated guidebooks published by Wardlock & CoS
    • Muirhead’s Northern Italy – The Blue Guides

    These books contain a treasure trove of information and advice on places and events like markets which no longer exist. Some districts in London and Berlin were badly damaged in the war.

    Indeed, in the case of Berlin, you have a city bombed, and then subject to partition, with a wall running through the city and a no man’s land in between the inner and outer wall. This left tenements and even an old major railway station in limbo, abandoned.

    The map that folds out from the inside back cover of How to Be Happy in Berlin represents a city that no longer exists in the same form. Rebuilding after the war, empty lots left derelict for many years, the wall, and finally the post-reunification building programme has changed the city to the point where areas around the old Potsdamer Platz, for example, would be unrecognisable to a Weimar-era Berliner.

    That’s why a map of late Weimar Berlin is so valuable for anyone writing a novel set in that period. It’s fascinating to look at, and you can also cross-reference the map information with photo searches online. I have a book of photos of Berlin in this period. But there are images online and videos on the likes of YouTube.

    Travel guide information

    While you don’t want to overload your narrative with too much unnecessary information, travel guides provide useful snippets like the price of a taxi, the various railway stations for different destinations (which station do you take in Berlin for the boat train back to Britain), restaurant and food information, etc. Want to know the restaurants near Potsdamer Platz, just so you can throw in a real place? How to Be Happy in Berlin provides a list and the average price. It also goes into the different cabarets and nightlife. Just in case your characters are having a night on the town.

    You can also deduce social customs of the period – some cabarets didn’t allow girls (women) to enter the main establishment unless they were accompanied by a male. According to John Chancellor, the girls therefore hung around the bar, waiting for a male to take them through the ‘magic door that leads to the lights and the champagne‘. He also assures us that the German girl is not ‘a fat, stolid and stupid wench‘. No, Berlin girls are fine girls!

    They also include warnings about places to avoid or what not to do (because the locals don’t like it).

    My Italian guidebook, once owned by someone called Dorothy in 1924 (because she pencilled it inside the book), has passages she’s underlined warning of dangers to tourists. Or perhaps someone else underlined them for her, as an example of what to watch out for.

    Dorothy left some evidence of her holiday in the guide – a pencilled itinerary, and a small flier for a Venetian shop (whose address I tracked down on Google Street View – only to find the shop is no longer there and something else occupies the building).

    Yes, old travel guides, when used with Google Street View, can turn into fascinating rabbit holes, where you can spend all day checking out what those old places look like now. Some addresses and streets will obviously be gone. While some street names will be changed.

    Earlier travel and location accounts

    There are earlier travel accounts – for example, eighteenth century writer Samuel Johnson’s book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland AND The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (Penguin Classics). Somewhere on my bookshelves I think I have an eighteenth century travel account of America.

    I also have this Regency A-Z of London, which I found in a used bookshop many years ago:

    You can also check out diaries. If you want to know about an eighteenth century masquerade ball in London, you could check out Fanny Burney’s diaries. If you want to check out the opera in Italy, read Casanova’s diaries.

    Diaries and letters can tell you a lot, including descriptions of old eighteenth century pleasure gardens, the entertainments there, and the kinds of people who visited.

    One of my historical novel clients had her characters visit these places, as well as real period shops, etc. While you can just make things up, it’s fun to throw in actual places.

    If you’re researching via history books on specific locations, you’ll often find they reference primary sources like diaries, letters, and other accounts. Don’t ignore these – they can be tracked down online and downloaded if they’re in the public domain.

    I have a book called Glasgow in 1901 by James Hamilton Muir which likely has its foreign equivalents – it’s a tour of the city, with plenty of details and descriptions.

    Period journalism can also be a great source of information on location and social custom. I have a book on Glasgow called Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs: Being Sketches of Life in the Streets, Wynds and Dens of the City. It’s from 1858. It contains interactions with some of the poorest people, and one account describes someone lying in a basement under blankets because they shared clothing with someone else who had gone out.

    These are details many modern authors wouldn’t even think to include.

    The book also includes sensory information from the author about smells, etc.

    Paintings and sketches

    Pre-photography, our main visual reference point for locations is art. I collect books on Glasgow history, and the earlier periods are represented by artists’ renderings of the city. This shows the development of the city over time, the disappearance of rural areas as the city expanded and gobbled up more territory. It also shows old bridges, old building styles, and women standing in the Clyde washing laundry before the river was later deepened in the nineteenth century for shipping.

    All of this will also apply to other cities and towns in the UK and other countries.

    Sometimes artists were commissioned to record a location. Later photographers would be commissioned by some cities and towns.

    Photography and film

    The photographic record starts in the 1840s. For a city like Paris, this allows the modern viewer to see Paris before it was redeveloped by Haussmann. The old rickety buildings had not yet been replaced by the Parisian terraces we think of today. One of my historical novel clients wrote about this city around the time some of the new builds were up while other slum areas still existed. You can read my interview with her in which we discuss her research.

    The city of Glasgow commissioned photographer Thomas Annan to record the old slum district next to the High Street and the old Jacobean university college, before they were demolished. The old tenements would have been more sanitary before the industrial age, when the tenants had a free run down to the river, but boxed in during the industrial age, and crowded out by Irish and Highland immigrants, they had fallen into ruin.

    The celluloid record in terms of moving film starts in the 1890s, and is another useful source of information. Fiction films shot on location can show a lot of background detail. You can even cross-reference a street sign on a city building with your period map, allowing you to build a picture of that district if it’s a significant location in your novel.

    Fiction films often have fascinating backdrops, but you can also look to documentary film. If you’re interested in late Weimar Berlin, I recommend People on Sunday, which is an invaluable insight into the lives of young people in the city.

    Genealogical and other records

    Don’t forget to check out the following:

    • census records (which have fascinating references to professions that no longer exist and which can show the social makeup of a tenement or district
    • Parish records (pre-census in the UK)
    • valuation rolls are another record in Scotland – I can’t comment on anywhere else
    • Post Office directories
    • Cemeteries and gravestones
    • Old newspapers and magazines (another rabbit hole!)
    • ordinance survey maps

    Novels, poetry and songs

    Period novels are always a useful source of information. I also have a book of bawdy English songs which likely includes little social details about the various periods. Likewise, the poetry of Jonathan Swift has thrown up some juicy details, even when he’s being downright cutting. Check out the link to his poem below!

    A Beautiful Young Nympth Going To Bed.

    Conclusion

    Researching for historical fiction can lead to going down endless rabbit holes. So while research can help bring your historical world to life, it’s important to remember that much of the information you find is not something to include in your novel.

    However, understanding the location, the social customs there, the prices of things, the venues, and the social demographics, can help you and your characters navigate your period world more realistically. Sometimes all you need is a tiny detail, mentioned in passing.

    It’s best not to info dump, but you can impart information in a less obvious way that helps your reader immerse themself in the story. Remember to include sensory information. The past, for example, didn’t always smell very nice, but you also have visual textures, noises (carriage wheels on cobblestones), and more.

    Some writers research as they go along, and others research up front, before they even start. In the case of the latter, the danger is in delaying the writing of the story for too long. Research can be very seductive. It pays to exercise restraint and remember the purpose of the research – it’s not a form of procrastination! It is meant to serve the novel, not provide a useful avoidance technique for never starting your book.

    There is more to be said about historical research. I might keep some for another post. In the meantime…

    Are you a historical novelist looking for feedback?

    I have worked on novels set in the following periods:

    • Paleo period – with mammoths and cave lions, etc!
    • 18th century
    • 19th century
    • 20th century
    • World War Two

    I particularly like 18th century onwards, though I do have a substantial collection of 17th century history books. And I’m not averse to the medieval period either!

    I am currently open for manuscript critiques and developmental edits. One of my historical novel clients sent me a very long and detailed outline of her book to edit first, before she went on to write it. Outline critiques are also a service I provide – I can also include useful recommendations on books or documentaries/films that might be useful.

    You can find my service pages below. Or you can contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com

    Service page – click the buttons there for more details on each service.

    You can also check out my blog post below on using period language in your work.

    Too much period language in a historical novel?

    Sign up for emails on writing and editing

    I write a weekly post on Substack, usually on a Monday or Tuesday. These posts are sometimes blogs I’ve posted here, which you can receive directly in your inbox. Sometimes they are newsletters or announcements featuring writing competitions I’ve heard about. You can sign up below.

  • Inspiration, Research, Writing

    Historical fiction as a time machine

    Fifth Avenue, Vanderbilt mansion and Plaza Hotel, 1910

    Historical fiction as a time machine

    What is the appeal of historical fiction – does it function as a time machine?

    If you’ve ever pored over an old photograph like the one above, it might be the mystery and appeal of a lost world.

    There’s something romantic about vanished buildings like the Vanderbilt mansion – the largest private residence ever built in New York City.

    No one will ever walk up those steps to the entrance ever again. No one will ever walk the hallways. No one will ever pull aside the curtains and look out onto Fifth Avenue.

    It is a ghost house that recently drew my attention when a coloured version was posted on a Twitter account.

    The family who lived there are all dead. The maids who dusted and cleaned are long gone. The street looks very different today.

    The only way to visit this world is to study photographs. Or to read accounts of the area and the vanished house itself.

    Of course, with fiction, we can not only visit the past but use it as inspiration for new stories.

    What if there was a similar mansion belonging to a fictional family? Who might this family be? How did they build their fortune?

    And what dramatic events might take place in the house? What mysteries and secrets? Not just among the family, but also among those who worked there.

    Lost houses and mysterious houses are a common theme in fiction.

    Cornelius II Vanderbilt Mansion

    The real house was built in 1883, along the west side of Fifth Avenue to West 58th Street. It was a product of the Gilded Age and possessed 130 rooms.

    The owner, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, was the eldest grandchild of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the family fortune.

    It wasn’t the only house Cornelius II owned, and 13 years after moving in, he suffered a stroke. His last three years were spent in a wheelchair.

    The house was six stories tall, not including the basement. On the first floor, there was a two-story ballroom and a two-story dining room, plus a salon, a smoking room, a den, an office, a library, a breakfast room, and much more.

    His wife’s bedroom, boudoir, bath, closet and dressing room were on the second floor. Cornelius’s bedroom was also there, along with his bathroom, dressing room, closet, and private study.

    In addition to the 130 rooms, there was a stable and private garden next door.

    After Cornelius’s death, his wife Alice lived on at the mansion with the 37 servants required to run the house. But she no longer entertained guests. Eventually she sold the house in 1926. Since the developers were only interested in the land, and not the house itself, it was demolished and replaced by the Bergdorf Goodman department store.

    Vanderbilt mansion, 1908

    The Gilded Era

    In The Age of Innocence (1920), which is set in the 1870s, Edith Wharton describes a house of this type early on. I’ve bolded anything relating to the description of the Beaufort house:

    The Beauforts’ house was one of the few in New York that possessed a ball-room (it antedated even Mrs. Manson Mingott’s and the Headly Chiverses’); and at a time when it was beginning to be thought “provincial” to put a “crash” over the drawing-room floor and move the furniture upstairs, the possession of a ball-room that was used for no other purpose, and left for three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year to shuttered darkness, with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner and its chandelier in a bag; this undoubted superiority was felt to compensate for whatever was regrettable in the Beaufort past.

    To be able to shut up a ballroom for 364 days of the year is a sign of pure luxury… and pure waste. Further down the page, Wharton says:

    … and two years after young Mrs. Beaufort’s marriage it was admitted that she had the most distinguished house in New York. No one knew exactly how the miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive, the caustic even called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr. Beaufort’s heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there without lifting her jewelled little finger. The knowing people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her friends. If he did, these domestic activities were privately performed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the detachment of an invited guest, and saying: “My wife’s gloxinias are a marvel, aren’t they? I believe she gets them out from Kew.”

    And further down still:

    The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ball. The Beauforts had been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ball-room chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess’s bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife’s friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when they left home.

    Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses’) one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d’or), seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.

    Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in somewhat late. He had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged footmen (the stockings were one of Beaufort’s few fatuities), had dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on their dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom Mrs. Beaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson drawing-room.

    Edith Wharton’s book was written long after the 1870s, but it still acts as a time machine. Wharton herself described it as “a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America… it was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914.”

    In an article in 2020, Hillary Kelly wrote that Wharton’s “status made her story more than believable—it made the story real … Novelists before Wharton understood that storytelling was an act of exposure, but she built it into the architecture of The Age of Innocence and weaponized it.”

    The Age of Innocence is available on Project Gutenberg for anyone who wants to read it. The excerpts above are from Chapter three.

    Wikipedia article on the house.

  • Research, Writing Advice

    Researching your novel’s locations online

    Researching your novel’s locations online

    Researching your novel’s locations online

    This blog covers researching your novel’s distant locations online with tools like Google Earth, Street View, Estate Agents, travel and genealogical sites. The chances are you already use some of these resources for location research, but if you don’t you’re missing out.

    So, let’s imagine you live in the US, but you’re writing a novel set in Scotland. You’d love to fly over and check out your locations, but you can’t afford it or have too many other commitments.

    It goes without saying that a contemporary location is better researched using, say, Google Street View. But if you’re writing an historical novel, you will still find historic districts, see cobblestone streets, old stonework, and many other useful details. Meanwhile, Google Earth will tell you a lot about topography.

    Using Estate Agents/Realtors

    And of course estate agent sites (realtors) will let you see both the exterior and interior photos of buildings. If you’re writing an historical, many of these buildings will be too new, and others will be former town houses and terraced houses redeveloped into a set of apartments. It’s worth checking out any details on this given by the estate agent site.

    If you’re looking for a fancy historic building in the Highlands, you should find something fairly easily. I’m not talking about castles, though you never know what’s up for sale.

    Check out any details regarding when the building was constructed or renovated. Check the exterior and interior photos – some buildings have a lot of old features still intact. Download any property prospectus and keep it on file.

    Check out the area on Google Street View. ‘Google drive’ around the area. Then have a look at the area from above using Google Maps – you can get an idea of where the area is located in relation to sea, lochs, mountains, etc.

    Of course, you could always take a building from one area and, using it as a model for your location, move it to another, adding in your own fictional details.

    All of this applies to other locations in other countries. Have a novel partly set in Paris? Check out property sites, Google Street View and Google Maps there too.

    Don’t forget YouTube and photo sites

    This then brings me to YouTube and photo sites, where there is a wealth of visual information linked to different areas.

    If you want to set part of your story onboard a train running on Scotland’s West Highland Line (considered to be one of the most beautiful rail journeys in the world), go over to YouTube and check out any videos posted by tourists and others.

    You can put together your own inspiration or location board – on Pinterest, for example.

    And, remember, Pinterest is a huge visual search engine, so if you’re looking for images for inspiration or research, that’s the best place to start.

    Genealogical records – a hidden resource

    If your novel is historical, it might be worth checking out the likes of census and parish records to get an idea of the people who lived in an area at a particular time, their occupations, how many people lived in the building, their relationships to one another, etc. This kind of information usually comes up during genealogical searches. And if you are interested in genealogy and Scotland, Scotland’s People is the best site to check out. You can also check out old post office directories.

    You should find equivalent resources for other countries.

    Additionally, you might find local history groups or local historians you can contact – you might even find them on Twitter or Facebook.

    Check out local writers

    It’s also worth checking out writers and books from your location to get an idea of how people speak. Some writing groups have websites and YouTube can provide you with recorded videos of readings and poetry slams, etc.

    Then there’s local newspapers and local radio, etc.

    It’s easier than ever to research your novel’s locations online. Just be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of endlessly fascinating facts and places. Researching the background of a novel can be too addictive. Never lose sight of the end goal – a well-researched book with a strong sense of place.

    There’s another reason to research your novel’s locations online if you can’t visit in person. Especially if you include locations you know well alongside places you hardly know at all. Check out this post.

    Looking for feedback for your novel?

    I offer developmental feedback on fiction and memoir. This includes opening chapters developmental edits for those on a budget. But you can also ask about manuscript critiques, beta critiques (shorter reports), or full developmental edits. You can contact me at karen@indiecateditorial.com and we can discuss your project. I can also do a short sample developmental edit on the first 2000 words to let you see what a developmental edit (full or opening chapters) looks like.

    You can also check my services page here:

    Developmental Fiction Editing Services – IndieCat Editorial