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This volume focuses on global historical fiction written by and for women, approximately, in the last 30 years. Its key themes include the inner life and experiences of the female historical figure, genre-bending in historical fiction story worlds, and unusual angles that the historical fiction storytelling employs.
List of contents
List of ContributorsIntroduction: The Golden Age of Historical Fiction: Women's Fictionalizations of the Historical Past from a Global Perspective
Alicja Bemben and Michael Joseph
Part I. 21st-Century Heroines
Chapter 1. Representation of the First Turkish Woman Dramatist's Life on the Stage: Bilgesu Erenus's
The Stigmatised Coffin (
Yaftali Tabut)
Gül¿en Sayin
Chapter 2. Bad Faith and Existential Authenticity in Joanne Joseph's
Children of SugarcaneAlicja Bemben
Chapter 3. Who Holds the Power? Gendered Experiences of Greatness in Shelley Parker-Chan's
She Who Became the SunAleksandra Mzyk
Chapter 4. Feminism Meets Enterprise:
Gentleman Jack's Anne Lister and Her Dual Legacy?
Paulina Hacä
Part II. Genre Experiments and the Social Change
Chapter 5. Story Writing and Ghost Summoning in Ghada al-Samman's
The Impossible Story and
Farewell, DamascusZaina Ujayli
Chapter 6. On the Fringes of Realism. Bizarre World in the Recent Polish Historical Fiction
Dariusz Piechota
Chapter 7. "American Poison":
The Buccaneers (2023) and the Open-Ended Potential of Historical Romance
Maria Ogórek
Part III. (En)Gendering and Sexualising the Past
Chapter 8. Bring Up the Bodies: Hilary Mantel's Romancing of History
Tiziana Ingravallo
Chapter 9. The WoMen of Troy: The Reflection of
L'autre Bisexualité in Pat Barker's Historical Novel,
The Women of TroyMerve Altin
Chapter 10. Fingersmith and the Pornography of the Past that Never Was
Justyna Jajszczok
Index
About the author
Alicja Bemben, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English, the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. She is a co-organiser of various academic conferences and events, has co-edited several monographs, and authored a number of texts dealing with historiography (especially in the vein of Hayden White), historical novels (especially by Robert Graves) and their relationships. She cooperates with several journals, is a member of a few societies and research groups, and has coordinated a number of scientific projects.
Michael Joseph retired as Rare Books Librarian and full professor Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is the author of
Teaching Guide to the Norton Anthology of Children's Literature (2005), over 65 scholarly texts (articles, book chapters, reviews, etc.) and various novels, books of short stories and poetry. He is an editor of
Handmade Literacies: Special Issue of The Lion and the Unicorn and
The Robert Graves Review and the founding director of the New Jersey Book Arts Symposium. His recent publications include "Making Video Poems from Poems Made from Diary Entries Made from Dreams" in
Book 2.0 (2025, 12 (1-2)),
Omni-Puss in Boots (2025),
The Marvelous Real in a Land of Dreams (2024), and "Children's Poetry" in
The Routledge Companion to Children's Literature (2023). In 2023, he was asked to participate in a discussion of contemporary children's poetry, which appears as chapter 29, "Contemporary Children's Poetry: A Colloquy" in
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry (2023). Since 2016 he has been the editor of
The Robert Graves Review (formerly
Gravesiana)
