medieval europe fiction recommendations

I'm sorta in love with the Pagan series by Catherine Jinks. She writes a lot of other historical fiction too, but I haven't read them. The Pagan series is set in the Crusades, in Jerusalem (and then France for the other books), and is about a young man and his Knight. Pagan is a mixed race squire, brought up in a monastery, highly intelligent and very well educated for the time. Roland is religious and doesn't talk much, and sort of just takes orders. And the two of them become very close friends. The history aspects of it are really interesting too, and it paints a vivid picture of life at the time.
It's young adult, but I'm 22 and I love them, and it's definitely very well written. I highly recommend it. She's an Australian writer, but the books are available overseas.
Is anyone else a fan of her? I'm sorta desperate to find other fans.
http://community.livejournal.com/pagansfandom/ and if you have livejournal, here's a community for the series and her, and also her other books.

What medieval europe fiction books do you recommend?

Try Sharon Penman or Valerie Anand. Also Elizabeth Chadwick, though I'm a bit less keen on her, except for The Greatest Knight.

I would caution you against fiction written in other times about the Middle Ages. I've never found one that does much besides convey the author's highly anachronistic thoughts/ideas/etc. Evan Connell's imitation-history Deus lo volt! is an interesting experiment and best of these books, but remains inadequate, somehow.

My favorite is Dante's Divine Comedy, but less obvious is another favorite is Brant's Ship of Fools.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco gives an interesting account of life in a monastry during the Medieval era, it goes into Scholastic philosophy and controversies surrounding the early Fransciscan movement. The movie does not do it any justice. Brother Cadfael is less esoteric. I enjoyed The Name of the Rose but I had studied scholasticism.

People keep mentioning Brother Cadfael to me.

These are little known, but the finest historical fiction and the finest writing I know.

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. Won the Nobel Prize for literature in the late 1920s. Get the new Nunnally translation.

The Ivory Mischief by Arthur Meeker 17th century France and not a word or a character invented

The 14th of October, Ruan, This January Tale, Coin of Carthage, Gate to the Sea, Roman Wall by Bryher - Spare, short and powerful

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnet Really fine, but I've never been able to read any of her other historical fiction.

Eagle in the Snow and The Legate's Daughter by Wallace Breem

The Corn King and the Spring Queen and The Conquered by Naomi Mitchison

After submitting this, I see that Library Thing picked up as touchstones books I never mentioned. Apparently it doesn't know Mitchison's The Conquered (does that mean nobody here has cataloged it?) or Bryher's The Fourteenth of October.

Just to second Liam's recommendation of The Name of the Rose, which is a first-rate murder mystery. I've studied scholasticism too, but this was one of my favourite books before I knew anything about it – if anything, Umberto Eco helped me get into mediaeval philosophy, not vice versa!

I would also recommend The Clerkenwell Tales by Peter Ackroyd. It's an intriguing novella, wonderfully evocative of London circa 1400. (If you've read any of Ackroyd's unbearably pretentious non-fiction, don't let that put you off – and the same goes for Eco, come to think of it.)

Eco helped me enjoy medieval philosophy, I would'nt say that heled me understand it! I add my name to laceyvail's recomendation of Kristin Lavransdatter, cant beat a Nobel prize winner. As mentioned the Nunnally translation is best. It is published by Penguin and the translation has won awards.

Morality Play by Barry Unsworth is a gem of a novel - set in the 14th century, it is about a group of travelling players, a priest on the run, and the spiritual collapse of medieval English society. Short and excellent.

I think you'd like The Kingdom of the Grail by A. A. Attanasio

Which starts with the suggestion that it is a fantasy novel but slowly unwinds to reveal that all the magic and mysticism is explainable.

The book involves the grasping son sending his old mother off on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the height of the Crusades - years later she seemingly returns as a young woman to reclaim her position.

cheers

I like the novels by Roberta Gellis about Madeline, who runs a whore house in the time of Stephen II in London. She killed her husband, ran away, and did the best she could with a new identity in the oldest profession. The titles are in my library.
I just bought the Clerkenwell Tales, so glad to have the recommendation. I have all the Brother Cadfael videos, but the books are really better. Pargeter, was that who wrote them? Beauregard

#11 Beauregard.

Yes, the Brother Cadfael mysteries are written by Dame Edith Pargeter but she used the name Ellis Peters when she wrote them. She also used the name Edith Peters as well as Edith Pargeter, so she wrote under at least 3 names, maybe more.

MMF - Have you read Catherine Jinks' adult medieval mysteries? The Notary and The Inquisitor?
Catherine Jinks has a PhD in history, so her research is generally pretty good for fiction. It's no primary source, but it's not hugely inaccurate.
(BTW, you're not the only slightly older than young adult to enjoy the Pagan Chronicles. I'm a little older than you and still love them, as do a number of my friends.)

Second The Name of the Rose. I thoroughly enjoyed reading that.

Well, I'm a medievalist, and I love historical fiction. It's like brain candy. I don't want to read it all the time, but every once in a while, it's great.

A couple of series I thoroughly enjoy:

Sharan Newman, Death Comes as Epiphany, etc. Abelard, Heloise...
Caroline Roe, Remedy for Treason, etc. a blind Jewish physician in 14th-century Girona.

Both Newman and Roe, like Eco, are medievalists (Roe has a PhD in literature, and Newman, while only ABD, is VERY well connected with good medievalists!), and they do a wonderful job of bringing the worlds they describe to life. I recently visited Girona, and felt so able to "people" the call (the Jewish quarter). And it inspired me to do some research on Girona.

Here's Caroline Roe writing in the Medieval Academy newsletter about her novels:

http://www.medievalacademy.org/medacnews/news_roe.htm

Another interesting book is Down the Common by Ann Baer. I haven't scanned in that part of my library, I'm afraid... It's the antithesis of much medieval fiction, since it's about a small village somewhere in England and follows a peasant woman through a calendar year. No knights, no shining armor, and noone you've ever heard of.

# 6
Sometimes you can get the touchstone to bring up a title like The conquered with the correct author. You have to hit other while you're doing the Touchstone that came up and scroll down to get the right one. "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered..." has 407 copies in LT, while Mitchison's only has 7.

I could be wrong, but my research indicates that Catherine Jinks doesn't have a PhD, but a four-year undergraduate degree in medieval history. Her adult books are remarkably difficult to come by outside of Australia, it appears! I have just ordered her most recent adult novel, The Secret Familiar, and it's costing me a fortune to ship it from Oz.

Only 2 copies of The secret Familiar show up in worldcat, which is very few.

I find Cecelia Holland, author of The Firedrake, The Earl, and other titles really captures the atmosphere of the era.

Ok, I really have to challenge this thread's insistance upon modern texts set in the medieval era. If we really want to honor that time, we must, to some extent, believe that some aspects of that time were potentially superior to our own, or at least teach us useful or beautiful things. Otherwise, it's just antiquarianism or a weird hobby.

If we're not going to be weird hobbyists, we need to take the writings of the medieval period as potentially good - and, in particular, as the best source in describing what medieval persons thought. And they didn't write these books you guys recommend - they wrote other books that are usually very different. We do need to respect that, because many medieval authors carefully made explicit choices and decisions that are not those of us moderns. If we're not just hobbyists, we need to take those decisions as saying something potentially meaningful.

It's not that modern books about medievalia aren't sometimes amusing, but they are simply not of that time. Yes, I know the initial poster asked for historical fiction, but I think we should push back harder on that literary genre and ask ourselves how worthwhile that genre is when almost all actual medieval fiction (poetry, rather) is nearly entirely unknown. Umberto Eco (and even Sigrid Unset) don't really need our praise to increase their fame, but so many medieval poets do.

Are you thinking along the lines of Piers Plowman by William Langland?

I love medieval poetry -- there is nothing like Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy in any other era -- but it's not brain candy (which is, of course, to its credit). Historical fiction is a genre like any other, which I enjoy for itself.

I hardly consider myself a hobbyist. I'm a professional medieval historian. But I enjoy the occasional jaunt into medieval historical fiction for the purposes of relaxation and even of enlightenment. Caroline Roe led me to Girona -- and I'll be giving a paper based on archival sources there at Kalamazoo.

A thread on medieval poetry would be most welcome. But this is not it.

Agorelik, do you think people interested in medieval history should be forbidden from reading historical fiction? I'm a fan of Das Nibelungenlied, Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur and some of the Tristan tales, for example. But as you point out, modern historical fiction is quite different in concept, style and intent than medieval literature. In particular, modern writers attempt (successfully or otherwise) to move inside the skin of a character to give modern readers a sense of what it might have been like to be a person living in a historical period. Medieval writers simply weren't interested in doing that. For one thing, they and their audiences were living in the Middle Ages and didn't need any help to imagine what it was like. For another, they were usually more interested in presenting philosophical or religious allegories than in portraying the lives of their characters in a naturalistic way.

I, too, would welcome a thread on recommended medieval literature!

I just got Ken Follett's World Without End. Have any of you read it?

I haven't read World without end yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I think I'm #40 on the library wait list. It's also on my "to buy when it comes in paperback" list - which may happen before my turn comes up at the library :)

That *will* be a long wait! This one is supposed to be a sequel to Pillars of the Earth, but I've read that it stands well alone.

"Agorelik, do you think people interested in medieval history should be forbidden from reading historical fiction?"

I just don't think the two are very much connected.

"Medieval writers simply weren't interested in doing that. For one thing, they and their audiences were living in the Middle Ages and didn't need any help to imagine what it was like. For another, they were usually more interested in presenting philosophical or religious allegories than in portraying the lives of their characters in a naturalistic way."

Yes, but the question is why did they believe the best thing to do - and they did believe what they were doing was "natural" or told the truth in some way - was writing very differently than we do?

We can't assume that medieval persons were stupid or foolish. At least initially, we should assume that their claims (of telling us the most important things they knew), are at least potentially true. That we moderns prefer writings that are generally influenced by Romanticism (the prose novel about private life), isn't necessarily a correct preferance - and it certainly isn't and wasn't a universal preference. Our need for prose novels about private life may well be generated by our own unexamined biases / prejudices / neuroses, rather than by an objective standard of "naturalism".

Thus, ignoring the actual fictive writings of medieval persons means eliding over them in more substantive ways (indeed, potentially in the most substantive way). It might actually mean ignoring the potentially subversive or true or beautiful things that medieval persons knew and that we might need to know.

Agorelik: I don't think anyone in this thread is suggesting we "ignore the actual fictive writings of medieval persons" in favor of learning our medieval history from contemporary historical fiction. They are, as you point out, two entirely different and largely unrelated genres, so reading in one does not preclude reading in the other. I enjoy modern historical fiction, but that doesn't mean I don't also read the literature of the period.

I've just noticed this thread, and I'm surprised nobody has suggested the Heaven Tree trilogy by Edith Pargeter (writing as Ellis Peters): The Heaven Tree, The Green Branch and The Scarlet Seed. They seem to me (I'm no specialist) to be well researched and they are a great read, though sad.

Her Brother Cadfael books are also good, but lighter in tone.

This one is historical fiction and old, but I would still call it a wonderful and enlightening read from XIII century Bohemia and other nations of what is now German and the Holland: Lion Feuchtwanger's "The Ugly Duchess." Based on the true history of a powerful woman cursed with an ugly visage but a brilliant mind, it also has some elements of fantasy, and can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Duchess-Lion-Feuchtwanger/dp/1417906375

I'll try to get a touchstone for this book: The Ugly Duchess by Lion Feuchtwanger.

http://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Duchess-Lion-Feuchtwanger/dp/1417906375

This is the link, by putting spaces in front and behind the link. Amazon states that it is unavailable. 232 libraries have it in Worldcat.

I took a look and I think used versions of The Ugly Duchess are readily available, including Amazon.

Thank you, vpfluke!

Oh, you must read:
1) Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd About England area
2) The Source by James A. Michener About Middle East area

I personally fell in love with them, and they're more of a historical fiction than anything, taking you through the history. SOOOO good.

*edited to add touchstones

I have just started to reread My Lord John by Georgette Heyer. She is best known for her Recency romances, but according to the forward by her husband, was most interested in this period and did extensive research. It seems to be a pretty accurate description of the period 1397-1427.

We can't assume that medieval persons were stupid or foolish. I'm totally with you on that one agorelik! In fact, I think the vast majority of historical fiction writers are with you on that one. One of the reasons people write historical fiction is to introduce modern readers to this idea. They may not always succeed in accurately portraying the historical period, but I think they can provide an introduction to history for people who might not otherwise consider what we can learn from it. My interest in history originated from reading historical fiction as a child.

#28 - Pargeter's The Heaven Tree Trilogy may be my favorite historical fiction of all time. I think she does succeed in entering the world view of the period, and does it in a way that is intensely compelling to modern readers - an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, which is perhaps why agorelik doesn't care for historical fiction.

Thank you for some wonderful memories including My Lord John and the Pargeter Heaven Tree Trilogy - some memorable scenes in those books.

A few other good and great medieval reads come to mind...

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Knight with Armour by Alfred Duggan

Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliffe

The World is not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg (jaw dropping)

We Speak no Treason by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

Timeline by Michael Crichton (and in this case read the book, but avoid the film)

Thank you for some wonderful memories including My Lord John and the Pargeter Heaven Tree Trilogy - some memorable scenes in those books.

A few other good and great medieval reads come to mind...

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Knight with Armour by Alfred Duggan

Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliffe

The World is not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg (jaw dropping)

We Speak no Treason by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

Timeline by Michael Crichton (and in this case read the book, but avoid the film)

I'm developing a new website on historical novels, and now have a page up on Medieval Europe. I'd love to get feedback on it. What have I missed?

The website is www.historicalnovels.info

#38

Interesting site. I might put in a way to search for authors.

I saw James A Michener in your author listing, but didn't see The Source in Ancient History- Middle East listing.

Nice idea, margad. One criticism: the pages are too long for comfortable browsing. I think you should add internal links to allow navigation to and from their subsections.

You need a way for people to contact you (but think about spam prevention). I am sure you will find numerous suggestions for additions to your lists.

Thanks for all these suggestions!

I've added "Back to top" links at the bottom of each page, which should help a bit with navigation. I'm still working on figuring out how to add links to navigate to subsections within a page - the service I'm using doesn't offer a quick and easy way to do that. Ditto for an author search.

Michener's books will go in a forthcoming section for "sweep-of-history" books, since they don't fit neatly into any single-century lists.

I'm still learning about some of the more complicated website functions like blogs, guestbooks and the like. I'm hoping to add some of these features in the future, after the basic lists are up. Meanwhile, please pass on any suggestions you may have for me here or at my LT profile page. They are much appreciated!

Margad - two for medieval British isles, Harold the King and A Hollow Crown by Helen Hollick. The first is about Harold Godwineson and his eventual ascent to the throne and defeat by William the Conqueror, while the second is a prequel about the life of Emma of Normandy from when she is 13 until her son Edward the Confessor ascends the throne.

Oh, also, there are Nicole Galland's three historical fiction novels - The Fool's Tale, set in medieval Wales, a tragedy of sorts involving a love triangle which is a bit non-medieval in feel; The Revenge of the Rose, set in the Holy Roman Empire and Burgundy, which is a retelling of the Romance of the Rose with some new and interesting plot elements, mostly readable for its treatment of courtly love; and finally Crossed, which is about the Crusades and so new it doesn't have a touchstone.

There's a trilogy by Posie Graeme-Evans set in medieval England beginning with The Innocent which seems to be concerning a love affair between Anne de Bohun and Edward IV; the second one is called The Exile (wrong touchstone) but the first was so terrible I chose not to read further.

There is also The First Princess of Wales by Karen Harper, set in England, and ostensibly a romance between Joan of Kent and Edward the Black Prince, but that's just a disappointing romance novel dressed up in historical fiction form, so I'm not sure you'll want to include it.

For the Renaissance, you may want to include Sarah Dunant's two novels, Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan, as both deal with Renaissance Italy.

May come back with more later ...

Speaking of Dante, since I have yet to locate my other copy, I bought the relatively new three pb trans/commentary by the Hollanders. Thanks to antibioltics contra flu that put me flat in bed for 8 days, unable to read, I have finally struggled to a state of semi-consciousness and am reading the Inferno--one canto at a time: the poetry, the commentaryand notes, the poetry again to pick up the allusions I had missed first time around. This is a really good translation with Italian on one side, English on the other.

Really? How interesting you would think of historical fiction that way. My daughter is a medievalist and like you, historical fiction doesn't seem to bother her. But--when I was actively doing my thing, I didn't dare read any historical fiction in my period for fear some unattached and unreliable datum from fiction might drift through the sieve of my mind and be incorporated in a class or article to my everlasting mortification. Now that I am retired and can read anything I want to, I'm really having fun. and I really appreciate all the recommendations on this site.

What an awful dilemma, Beauregard! And the better the novel, the more likely you would be to slip up, I'm sure. Must be wonderful to be able to read what you want now.

Thanks for all the good suggestions, littlebookworm. I especially appreciate your suggesting Galland's The Revenge of the Rose, because I'm always on the lookout for novels set in medieval Germany.

The Name of the Rose and Kristin Lavransdatter are both good. You may also want to check out In A Dark Wood Wandering by Hella Haasse

#50

I'll try the touchstones by bracketing for the author: Hella S. Haasse and the title In a Dark Wood Wandering. How much of Hasse's work is in English & French, I wonder?

I believe most of Haasse's novels have been translated into English. Don't know about French, but I'd be inclined to guess yes.

I took a look at Wikipedia and Worldcat, and there are four works of Hella S. Haasse translated into English:
In a dark wood wandering
The scarlet city
Threshold of Fire: a novel of fifth century Rome
"Forever a Stranger and Other Stories"

Most of her works have been translated into French.

Brunellus #40, thanks again for the suggestion about adding internal links to navigate within the pages on my historical novels website http://www.historicalnovels.info/. I finally figured out how to put them in, and I think they're a great improvement!

Gosh, yes, that's much better – well done!

agorelik: There IS fiction about the Middle Ages that gets it right, but you have to choose your authors carefully. I see Sharan Newman listed over on the list at the right, and she is one who really does. For high adventure you probably can't beat Dorothy Dunnett, whose books I love even if they're less historical than Sharan's.

following #7, brunellus: The Name of the Rose is a really wonderful book, but I can't say the same of anything else Umberto Eco wrote, I fear. I had high hopes for Baudolino for a while, because it began well, but then veered off into off-putting fevered fantasy.

Re #18, Ammianus' recommendation of Cecelia Holland: I agree that she's very good at getting the atmosphere and even more, the characters' attitudes right. The latter is something many authors fail to manage. Another who is very good at this is Margaret Frazer.

Oh, please! Timeline in the same list as Don Quixote???? Ivanhoe and The Black Arrow are at least good reads, but Timeline is really BAD historical fiction in the part his time travelers are sent back to.

I am a glutton for punishment. I have read almost all of Crichton. It took me until I was an adult to realize what poor, formulaic books he writes, despite some good ideas. Timeline -- and I love time travel books and the medieval period -- was not a good book. (Sorry.)

Re #60, stellarexplorer: I read several of Crichton's books and enjoyed them, but they were the ones where I didn't recognize how little he knew of what he was basing them on. By the time he published Timeline, however, I knew a LOT about the period he thrust his time travelers into. Ouch! However, it's not EARLY as awful as what he did to Beowulf in Eaters of the Dead. He started with the Ibn Fadlan(?sp?) stuff, which was based on fact, and then did his best to destroy Beowulf. It took that awful movie to make it even worse, of course, which I hadn't thought possible.

That's NEARLY, not EARLY, in my previous post.

It's odd. There are many books I have admired but not enjoyed. With Crichton, I've enjoyed some of them, without admiring.

But I suspect that is all behind me now. I stopped with Prey. Last one.

Apologies for being negative. I love good books. And if anyone likes Crichton, that's all well too. Hard enough to find happiness in this world; who am I to quibble over the means of getting it?

Having Antonio Banderas as the star in The Thirteenth Warrior aka Eaters of the Dead, was enough to have a world of shortcomings and mistakes forgiven. *Sigh*

Some early medieval / dark ages fiction which ‘gets it right’ – ‘Storyteller’ and ‘Flight of the Hawk’ by G. R. Grove. Well researched sixth century Britain, and good writing, too. (I attempted to put in Touchstones for the titles, but the system insisted on attributing them to other authors, so I took them out.)

Re #64 varielle: I like him, too, even when it's only his voice as a cat or a bee, but I couldn't watch more than part of 13th Warrior!

I don't see Jack Whyte's Knights of the Black and White and Standard of Honor mentioned here.

On the debate of whether historical fiction is 'worthy' or accurate, my opinion is that if it makes the reader go 'I want to learn more' it's a good thing.

Between them, it was at least in part the Mists of Avalon and sequels along with the Katherine Kurtz Temple and the Stone and the Temple and the Crown, along with other historical fiction that inspired me to take medieval history classes.

They're a bit later, but what is the opinion on Alison Weir's novels Innocent Traitor and The Lady Elizabeth?

I've read too many adverse comments on Weir to want to read her books when there are others who distort history less and write really good books.

#67 - I have read Innocent Traitor and it was pretty good, and seemed, pace #68, pretty accurate compared to Alison Plowden's biography of Lady Jane Grey that I read immediately before or afterwards (can't remember which now).

Has anyone suggested The Corner That Held Them so far? Really, really excellent book about the rhythms of life in an English convent over several decades.

Isn't (or shouldn't) there be a distinction between historically accurate books and those that are merely set in the past?

I mean there are a great many books set in medieval times where everybody is well-scrubbed, brilliantly dressed, with blushing lips and good manners. Should that count? Or should there be a subcategory for books that have a more realistic presentation of place and time.

I never read bodice rippers/historical "romance" novels myself. If the presentation of time is inept or absent, I want nothing to do with it. Good ones: Margaret Frazer, Candace Robb, Peter Tremayne, Sharan Newman, Sharon Penman, Alan Gordon, Cecelia Holland,Michael Jecks, Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters, Kate Sedley, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Dorothy Dunnett, Bruce Alexander, Alys Clare, Susanna Gregory, Bernard Knight, Edward Marston.

I see "Touchstones" only works on about half my list(message 72).

How about The Stones of the Abbey by Fernand Pouillon -- I seem to remember that as a fascinating look at medieval architecture.

For those who are interested in the lives of medieval Jewish women, you might want to read Maggie Anton's Rashi's Daughters trilogy. She did 15 years of research to ensure that what she wrote was as accurate as possible.