I will try to be practical, but I am afraid that I shall have to be, at the same time, somewhat egotistic. If I can give any useful lessons, these must be drawn from my own practice.
Size
Some business considerations
To begin at the beginning—what is the best size for the historical novel?—or, as we had better perhaps call it, historical tale? All my own have been of the one-volume kind, varying from fifty thousand to eighty thousand words, to employ the prosaic but useful measurement now in vogue among editors and publishers. And now, as my readers desire, I suppose, to earn their bread, or at least their butter, by writing, some business considerations may profitably come in. The demand for books in this country comes either from the circulating libraries or from private purchasers. It is the first of these only that, as a rule, buy the three or two volumed novel. There are a few exceptions, as, for example, Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere. Hence novels are commonly published at a fictitious price—a price, I mean, that bears no practical relation to the cost of production, but is adapted to the circumstances of a temporary and limited demand. Some two score of writers, not of the first rank, have a public of readers sufficiently large to make such a demand on the libraries, that, at the fictitious price above described, a remunerative sale is obtained. A certain number of novels just pay their way. Many cost their authors sums more or less considerable. Now for the private purchaser. In the matter of buying books, the average Englishman, and still more the average Englishwoman, is parsimonious in the extreme. His or her purchases in this direction are commonly limited to a Bible, a Prayer-book, a book of devotion, possibly a volume of some popular author whom it is fashionable to have on one’s drawing-room table. Still, the average Englishman is not a stingy creature. He is generous in giving. Hence the books which he would not think of buying for himself, he will buy to give to others. Hence the institution of “Christmas Books.” After all, there is no present so easy, so convenient, so harmless, and so cheap as a book. Five shillings, and less, a sum for which one could not buy the cheapest of cheap jewellery, will purchase a quite respectable-looking volume. And as Christmas is the time for giving presents, so Christmas is the time for selling books. It is a fact which any publisher dealing in this kind of ware will confirm, that books of precisely the same character and merit, published in May and October (for the Christmas book has to be finished in July, or even earlier, to be published in October), have a very different sale. And a book, to be sold in any numbers, must be a single volume. Of course publishers have overstocked the market. The supply of late years has enormously increased, and now surpasses any possible demand. Still the fact remains, that the most hopeful prospect for a young writer is to produce a one-volumed tale that will take its chance among the crowd of “Christmas books.” And here, I think, the “historical tale” has a somewhat better chance of success than most of its competitors. The father, the mother, the uncle, the aunt, who is choosing a present of this kind, will often give a preference to a book that behind its first and obvious purpose of amusing, has, or is supposed to have, another more or less latent purpose of instructing. There is also a very important demand for school prizes, and the “historical tale” has a manifest fitness for supplying this.
Choice of subject
The dimensions of the book, then, being settled, the next question is, what shall be the subject? Greek and Roman history supply a large choice. And they have this advantage, that the authorities which have to be consulted are limited in number and extent. If I am writing a tale of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, for instance, I know that the contemporary writers are few, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristophanes, two or three early Orators, while Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and Cornelius Nepos may also be consulted as secondary authorities. Acquainted with these, one cannot be confronted with any neglected authors. Similarly, for a tale of the days of Nero, we have Seneca and the elder Pliny contemporary, and Tacitus nearly so, Suetonius and Plutarch a generation further off, and Dio Cassius more remote, but one who had access to good sources of information. Here again the limits are narrow. Still I could not recommend any one not well provided with classical scholarship to choose such a theme. There are numberless pitfalls. Even authors of ability and repute are apt to fall into some of them. I have seldom, for instance, read a story of Roman life in which the names were not all confusion.
Technical knowledge necessary
Something of the same kind of technical knowledge would be wanted for a tale of Egyptian or Assyrian life. In these cases the interest is remote, and the preliminary knowledge required in the reader rare. Where nine people know something about Miltiades, or Pericles, or Alexander, Julius Cæsar, or Trajan, or Belisarius, scarcely one has ever heard of Rameses II., or Amenophis III., or Queen Hatasu.
Jewish history has a fascination; but the risk of falling below the standard of dignity required is vast.
Modern history