World Literature

Seven Authors for the History Books

Make the dread of history a thing of the past with these engaging writers of historical fiction.

Matthew Pearl. Pearl makes classic literature interesting, something your English teacher might want to try.

• The Last Dickens. The setting is Boston, 1870. News of Charles Dickens' death has arrived. Publisher Daniel Osgood sends his clerk to pick up Dickens' last manuscript. The clerk is found dead and the manuscript is missing.
• The Poe Shadow. Any fan of Poe will love Pearl's mystery involving Poe's death.

Charles Dickens. Dickens might be better known for his holiday stories, the most famous being A Christmas Carol. His novels, however, capture the essence of Victorian England and bring to light the squalid conditions for the lower classes brought on by the Industrial Revolution.

• A Tale of Two Cities. One of Dickens' most popular novels takes place leading up to and during the French Revolution. The two cities are London and Paris.
• Bleak House, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Hard Times, Oliver Twist. Take your pick. Each of these novels presents 19th-century England as Dickens saw it.

Michael Shaara and Jeff Shaara. The works of this father and son tandem would be better characterized as dramatized non-fiction, although it is technically considered historical fiction.

• The Civil War Trilogy. Michael Shaara's Killer Angels dramatizes the Battle of Gettysburg. Jeff's Gods and Generals tells all that happened before the Battle of Gettysburg and his The Last Full Measure chronicles all that happens after the Battle of Gettysburg. Although the trilogy is considered fiction, it's based nearly entirely on fact.
• Rise to Rebellion. Those interested in the American Revolution will find Jeff Shaara's powerful portrait of the leaders and events that led the American colonies to revolution insightful and entertaining.

Willa Cather. Most tales of the Old West, such as Owen Wister's The Virginian and the numerous dime store novels that shaped the genre, do not give an accurate portrait of the American frontier. Cather's focus on ordinary settlers sheds new light on how the west was settled.