One historian who may not dismiss novelists and fiction is Jared Farmer. In accepting the 2009 Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians he said some interesting things about the craft and the historians’ guild. Farmer’s book, On Zion’s Mount, garnered him the award. Farmer says this in his speech:

A history book is less creative than a novel, for the novelist creates a new world. The historian, meanwhile, is restricted by this world—the extant sources, especially, but also the rules of the guild. However, just as a fugue or sonata can be suprisingly creative and stunningly beautiful, an artful history book can be euphonically logical: it can play with the conventions even as it honors them.”

The text of the whole speech resides at
The American Scholar website