Historical inaccuracy no bar to publication...

girlyswot · Apr 16, 2008

Several times I've seen Julia Quinn's regency novels recommended so today, on a whim, I bought one. On page three I found this:

Lucas returned to the kitchen carrying a small metal box. He held it out to Elizabeth. "I've saved one pound, forty."

To which, I'm afraid, my reaction was one pound, forty what? It's about 150 years before decimalisation came in, so it can't be £1.40. Plus, if it were, that would be an enormous sum of money for an 8 year old in an indigent family to have saved. And what on earth is that comma for after 'pound'?

I have to say, it gives me hope! You really don't have to get everything right to be a successful historical novelist.

Zelenka · Apr 16, 2008

girlyswot said:
Several times I've seen Julia Quinn's regency novels recommended so today, on a whim, I bought one. On page three I found this:

To which, I'm afraid, my reaction was one pound forty what? It's about 150 years before decimalisation came in, so it can't be £1.40. Plus, if it were, that would be an enormous sum of money for an 8 year old in an indigent family to have saved. And what on earth is that comma for after 'pound'?

I have to say, it gives me hope! You really don't have to get everything right to be a successful historical novelist.

Maybe he calls Elizabeth 'forty'?

girlyswot · Apr 16, 2008

LOL. Could be.

Jersey Chick · Apr 16, 2008

Seems to me she saw that the US had decimilisation back then, and figured Britain must've too.

donroc · Apr 16, 2008

Makes me Dewey-eyed.

Jersey Chick · Apr 16, 2008

What's even funnier are innacuracies in contemporary books. I read one of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels - in it she describes one of the minor characters as having been a NY Giants cheerleader. This character would have done this in the early to mid 80s. Except for one thing -

The Giants don't have cheerleaders. As far as I know, they've never had them. But I know for a fact there weren't any in the 80s or 90s.

lkp · Apr 16, 2008

Ouch. I may well have errors just as egregious in my novel but still, ouch. Ouch especially because decimalization in the UK is relatively recent, I suspect within Julia Quinn's lifetime (though I don't know her age and may be wrong about that).

Jersey Chick · Apr 16, 2008

Julia Quinn's maybe in her late thirties/early forties - or she's aging very well! I saw her at my local RWA chapter's conference in October.

tallus83 · Apr 16, 2008

The UK started down the decimal road around 1971 or 1972. I remember seeing signs saying something was 10np, meaning 10 new pence (decimal) which I think was equal to one shilling in old money.

DWSTXS · Apr 16, 2008

I guess I'll need to re-write the chapter in my novel where Custer, so he wouldn't be bothered during the battle, sets his cell phone on vibrate, right before the indians attacked...

Jersey Chick · Apr 16, 2008

DWSTXS said:
I guess I'll need to re-write the chapter in my novel where Custer, so he wouldn't be bothered during the battle, sets his cell phone on vibrate, right before the indians attacked...

Ahh... just make it one of those huge 10 pound cell phones

DWSTXS · Apr 16, 2008

Jersey Chick said:
Ahh... just make it one of those huge 10 pound cell phones

yeah, a bag phone. so big they had to hand crank it. and carry it on a pack mule.

Zelenka · Apr 16, 2008

tallus83 said:
The UK started down the decimal road around 1971 or 1972. I remember seeing signs saying something was 10np, meaning 10 new pence (decimal) which I think was equal to one shilling in old money.

10 np was two shillings. Even when I was younger, we still had some old shilling or two shilling coins in circulation, which we used for 5p or 10p respectively. I remember taking loads of them to the bank in the late 80s or early 90s because they finally decided they wouldn't accept them any more.

I don't know if I'm strange, but I love glaring historical errors in books and films. I have a book where Jack the Ripper comes back to life in 1980s America, with flashbacks to London in 1888, and it has some laugh-out-loud moments.

Jersey Chick · Apr 16, 2008

DWSTXS said:
yeah, a bag phone. so big they had to hand crank it. and carry it on a pack mule.

Like the one they use on M*A*S*H!

pdr · Apr 16, 2008

And the editors passed it?

SIGH!

lkp · Apr 16, 2008

JessRamage said:
10 np was two shillings. Even when I was younger, we still had some old shilling or two shilling coins in circulation, which we used for 5p or 10p respectively. I remember taking loads of them to the bank in the late 80s or early 90s because they finally decided they wouldn't accept them any more.

I remember my first trip to England as a child in the mid seventies still finding shillings floating around and being so excited. I felt like I was living inside an Enid Blyton.

jennontheisland · Apr 16, 2008

I don't blame editors for this kind of thing, pdr. I think authors (and their critiquers) have more a responsibility for fact checking and accuracy than editors do. Granted, it would have been nice if they'd caught it, but really, Ms. Quinn is the one who needs to make sure she sets the time and place with her words.

aliajohnson · Apr 16, 2008

Julia Quinn writes historical romance--wonderful, wonderful historical romance, imo. It's a different animal than historical fiction and readers come at it with different expectations.

pdr · Apr 16, 2008

Huh?

Yes, I agree, the responsibility is with the author, but an editor should have picked this one up.

It's a different animal (from) historical fiction and readers come at it with different expectations.

If it is sold as historical then the author should get her historical facts right!

Are you implying that romance readers are so thick that they don't deserve writing which is factually accurate, or just that they want a 21stC heroine stuck in a costume and a pretty setting labelled historical and don't care about the history, therefore the writer does not have to care?

aliajohnson · Apr 16, 2008

pdr said:
If it is sold as historical then the author should get her historical facts right!

Are you implying that romance readers are so thick that they don't deserve writing which is factually accurate, or just that they want a 21stC heroine stuck in a costume and a pretty setting labelled historical and don't care about the history, therefore the writer does not have to care?

First of all, it's sold as a romance. In the romance section of the bookstore.

Second, no, romance readers are not thick. Yeesh. It's simply that absolute historical accuracy isn't, generally, the first priority for a romance reader. It's a freedom I appreciate as both a writer and a reader. We can have outspoken, democratic, adventure seeking heroines in regency England. With great teeth. And no body odor.
We're allowed werewolves and vampires and gentlemen spies.
And we're guarenteed a HEA every single time.
Considering those glaring historical inaccuracies--or at least improbabilities--"one pound, forty," just isn't a big deal.

pdr · Apr 17, 2008

You can't have your cake...

and eat it too!

If you label something historical romance then the least the writer of it can do is get the history right.

"one pound, forty," just isn't a big deal.

No, but it's a sign of poor research and sloppy writing, and a good indicator that the book isn't worth reading.

And as I belong to the Romance Writers of New Zealand, because they are one of the most professional, dedicated and fun writing groups in NZ, I can say that I know many of the writer members would be disgusted that such a simple, easily researched error should be allowed into a published book. There would be a chorus of 'It's writing like that which gives Romance writers a bad name.' from them all.

girlyswot · Apr 17, 2008

aliajohnson said:
It's simply that absolute historical accuracy isn't, generally, the first priority for a romance reader. It's a freedom I appreciate as both a writer and a reader. We can have outspoken, democratic, adventure seeking heroines in regency England. With great teeth. And no body odor.
We're allowed werewolves and vampires and gentlemen spies.
And we're guarenteed a HEA every single time.
Considering those glaring historical inaccuracies--or at least improbabilities--"one pound, forty," just isn't a big deal.

It's a different thing, though. It's one thing to have a heroine with great teeth and no b.o. and quite another to have no sense of time or place in your description. This story felt to me like reading Harry Potter fanfiction written by an American who had no idea that England is, somehow, different. It was hard to see why the author had labelled the place where it happened as Surrey, given the lack of any correspondence between the place in the book and Surrey. Similarly it was hard to know why the book was said to have taken place in Regency England - there was no description of any kind that would have indicated this. Not a dress, nor any kind of etiquette that was vaguely plausible. Nothing.

I don't mind if things are not strictly accurate - I've said so often in this forum. But I do think they have to have a certain plausibility that draws the reader in, and an internal coherence that holds the setting of the book together.

So then when the one pound, forty and the wildly anachronistic tennis party happen - well it's just ludicrously hilarious. And for this romance reader, at least, very distracting.

And it doesn't have to be that way. The Spymaster's Lady, for example, is an excellent recent example of an historical romance that was well-researched and very evocative of its period - yet with a very confident, strong, appealing heroine.

Jersey Chick · Apr 17, 2008

I wouldn't have picked up on the pound thing - and it does strike me as assuming that because decimilisation (that word never looks right, no matter how I spell it) existed here, it existed in England at the same time. It's sloppy, but not egregiously so. I doubt it would've pulled me out of the story. Mostly because it isn't a detail I'd know about - but if it was... well... maybe my response would be different.

I do think the historical facts are just as important in an historical romance - no, it shouldn't be modern people dressed in period costume. I remember spending a huge chunk of time researching whether or not cufflinks were used in the 19th c. But someone's going to miss something, somewhere. It happens.

I'm wrapping up final line edits and going through the ms, I found a few things that I missed, that my editor missed, and that the FLE missed - three sets of eyes. Not many - but they were there. It happens.

tallus83 · Apr 17, 2008

Thanks for the correction, Jess. I wasn't exactly sure if 10np was equal to one or two shillings.

It was a while ago.

aliajohnson · Apr 17, 2008

girlyswot said:
It's a different thing, though. It's one thing to have a heroine with great teeth and no b.o. and quite another to have no sense of time or place in your description. This story felt to me like reading Harry Potter fanfiction written by an American who had no idea that England is, somehow, different. It was hard to see why the author had labelled the place where it happened as Surrey, given the lack of any correspondence between the place in the book and Surrey. Similarly it was hard to know why the book was said to have taken place in Regency England - there was no description of any kind that would have indicated this. Not a dress, nor any kind of etiquette that was vaguely plausible. Nothing.

I don't mind if things are not strictly accurate - I've said so often in this forum. But I do think they have to have a certain plausibility that draws the reader in, and an internal coherence that holds the setting of the book together.

So then when the one pound, forty and the wildly anachronistic tennis party happen - well it's just ludicrously hilarious. And for this romance reader, at least, very distracting.

And it doesn't have to be that way. The Spymaster's Lady, for example, is an excellent recent example of an historical romance that was well-researched and very evocative of its period - yet with a very confident, strong, appealing heroine.

I've just started the Spymaster's Lady and I'm loving it, so you'll get no argument from me there.

As for the rest--Everyone has their own ideas on how much historical accuracy is necessary in their romance. You and I have drawn our line in one spot. Others draw it elsewhere.
There's at least one author I can think of who sprinkles the dialogue of her regency era characters with contemporary slang. Frankly, it makes me want to pull my hair out. But she's put out quite a few books over the years, and that tells me other people really like her work. Who am I to say they shouldn't be reading it, or that the publishers are wrong and bad for publishing it, or that she's a sloppy, lazy author for writing it?

Historical inaccuracy no bar to publication...

girlyswot

Zelenka

Going home!

girlyswot

Jersey Chick

Up all night to get Loki

donroc

Historicals and Horror rule

Jersey Chick

Up all night to get Loki

lkp

Jersey Chick

Up all night to get Loki

tallus83

DWSTXS

Mr Mojo Risin...

Jersey Chick

Up all night to get Loki

DWSTXS

Mr Mojo Risin...

Zelenka

Going home!

Jersey Chick

Up all night to get Loki

pdr

lkp

jennontheisland

the world is at my command

aliajohnson

pdr

aliajohnson

pdr

girlyswot

Jersey Chick

Up all night to get Loki

tallus83

aliajohnson