Fiction and History

Category: Fiction and history

  • History makes fiction of history

    Christopher Phillips’s book, Missouri’s Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of the Southern Identity in the Border West, makes many very interesting points about how much of history involves personally or familialy adopted story. Contemporary Missourians who “celebrate their Southern heritage , whether through family genealogy, as Confederate reenactors, or by touring the state’s…

  • Nobody’s Fault But Mine

    It’s hard not to think of Donald Harington when reading this passage from W. H. Tunnard’s A Southern Record. Tunnard, a cultured and well-to-do Louisiana soldier from Baton Rouge, reports on the speech of Civil War-era Arkansawyers in the Ozarks. Though he is looking down on us Ozarkers, we should hold our heads high. I…

  • A little knowledge rocks

    It is true that where an engineer, contractor or miner works all his life in one locality he becomes so expert in his knowledge of the methods and costs of rock excavation that he sees little practical value to himself in a knowledge of minerals, rocks or geologic principles. But when, possibly late in life,…

  • The historian, the fiction writer, and the uncorroborated airship

    Promoting the books of historians at University of Arkansas Press was one of the great pleasures of working there. Working with colleagues trained in history was an even greater pleasure. Kevin Brock, then the acquisitions editor, pointed out the passage below. We both latched onto it with glee, but with very different reactions. This is…

  • Where does the fiction writer fit in?

    Prisoners at the Gratiot Street Military Prison the 2 day of February 1863 from Corporal Willis Knight sent forward from Don’t know where on the ditto date of Feb 1863, by order of Don’t know who, as no papers came with guard of prisoners. There being no descriptive list sent with these prisoners it is…

  • Fiction and history

    This is an exploration not an answer. Throughout the writing of my novel (1993-2009), Morkan’s Quarry, I had the privilege of assisting a lot of historians of the south and of the Ozarks. When, through their own sleuthing or their own kindness, they discovered I was writing a novel set in the past, these historians…