The historical novel

by Herbert Butterfield

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL

CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: Fetter Lane
C. F. Clay, Manager
New York
The Macmillan Co.
Bombay, Calcutta and
Madras
Macmillan and Co., Ltd.
Toronto
The Macmillan Co. of
Canada, Ltd.
Tokyo
Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha
All rights reserved

THE HISTORICAL
NOVEL ❦❦ AN ESSAY
BY H. BUTTERFIELD
FELLOW OF PETERHOUSE

CAMBRIDGE: AT
THE UNIVERSITY
PRESS: MCMXXIV

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

The following essay, which was awarded the Le Bas Prize for 1923, is an attempt to find some relation between historical novels on the one hand and history treated as a study on the other; and, further, to work out a method of critical approach. It does not defend historical fiction against the historian; it welcomes this form of art from his point of view, finding its justification in the character of history itself. It seeks to estimate the novel as a work of resurrection, a form of “history,” a way of treating the past. In this it does not pretend to be exhaustive, but puts forward one aspect of the problem and attempts to track down the peculiar virtue of fiction as the gateway to the past.

H. B.

April 1924