Introduction

Abstract

In the early 1880s, after several decades of diminished interest in the historical novels that had been so popular in the early years of the nineteenth century, the reading public expressed, through sales and rentals at Smith’s, Boot’s, and Mudie’s, an enthusiasm for reading about the long ago and far away. So many stories dealing with adventures and derring-do in earlier centuries came into print that, for a short while at least, the phenomenon was known by the phrase ‘The New Historical Novel’. Within thirty years more than five hundred such novels were issued by publishers, and the reviews clearly indicated that they were taken very seriously by literary critics.