Novels with a long time frame?

Hello. Can anyone think of any historical novels in which the story covers a long time frame (say, 30 years or more) within one book, i.e. not over the course of a series?

I would like to find out how different authors deal with the passage of time in these instances - I'm a long-time reader of historical fiction and have been racking my brains, but can't think of a single one with such a long time frame.

My reason for asking is that I want attempt to write a novel of my own and my story is a long one. But even if I fail miserably with the writing, it would be great to be introduced to some new authors.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

The novel that springs immediately to my mind is Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd. The time frame on that is over 2000 years. But since it jumps from century to century, it probably is not what you're looking for. Also, I didn't like it all that much, though I understand other people did.

Great Expectations covers about 25 years, as does Tom Jones. Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne and The Waves by Virginia Woolf cover the same sort of time-frame in a more 'experimental' way.

Thinking about these books, they cover the time-span by 'telescoping' in some way; eg plenty about the protagonists' childhood, then an ellipsis before going into detail on their early adulthood. London by Edward Rutherfurd covers a timespan of a couple of millennia, by a series of snapshots from pre-history to contemporary times.

Edna Ferber wrote novels with long time spans. I can't remember if any of them reached 30 years. They frustrate me because she tends to spend lots of time on the early years, and then skims through the later years. The one in particular that I'm thinking of is Come and Get It.

How old was David Copperfield when the book ended?

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett, which I would recommend, covers at least 30 years.

I think Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman covers a fairly long period.

Both of these are "novelised biographies", I'm not sure if that's quite what you're looking for.

I think what is done a lot is to break the book into sections, each covering a certain period, with gaps where necessary and possibly quick summaries of what happened during the gap.

A lot of the James A Michener books cover huge periods of time.

Also Alex Hailey's Roots comes to mind.

If you're specifically looking at historical fiction, rather than literary novels, Henry Esmond might be a good bet - it essentially covers Esmond's whole career from childhood to retirement. Can't remember exactly, but I think he's born in the 1670s and retires to Virginia some time after Blenheim, so at least 40 years. You'll probably find that most Victorian historical novels have that sort of one-generation timeframe.

I suppose it all begs the question of what is an historical novel - obviously, any book that covers a long period of time is likely to be talking about periods earlier than that in which it was written, but I wouldn't necessarily class a novel like David Copperfield, that is set entirely in the author's own lifetime, as "historical".

I, Claudius is another very well-known historical novel that more-or-less takes the narrator's lifespan as its timeframe (although, strictly speaking, it falls outside your definition because it's in two parts).

Most books that cover a timeframe of more than one generation seem to do it by some sort of narrative trick - making a character re-appear in different centuries, like Orlando, or using a physical object instead of a character to link the scenes, like Accordion crimes. That sort of cheating probably takes them outside the Hist. Fict. genre. I have seen a few that follow several generations of the same family, but they tend to be split into multiple parts. I can't think of a good example of one in a single part - wasn't there one of the Kate Atkinson novels that had grandmother-daughter-granddaughter?

Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions.

I'm about to log on to my local library and reserve some of the recommended books - James A. Michener is at the top of the list, as I have never read any of his books, along with Sunne in Splendour.

#7 - I was discounting Dickens, etc, in my definition of 'historical fiction', but I think I will re-read Great Expectations (as #3 recommended) anyway. I've never read Henry Esmond, so might give that a go, too.

Thanks, everyone.

I really lliked Sarum. Most of Rutherford's novels will fit your criteria; London was a good one, too.

Abundance covers Marie Antoinette's life, from about 14 until her execution.

It's not quite what I'd call an historical novel, but Woolf's Orlando also fits.

A bit after the fact, but I thought I'd toss Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord out there. It covers a pretty big chunk of Chinese history by telling the story through five generations of the same family.

#7 I agree with your definition. If a book was contemporary when it was written, it's not an "historical novel," even though the period in which it is set is now history to us. Therefore, neither Dickens nor Jane Austen wrote historical fiction.

I think The Red Tent by Anita Diamant covers the period of the main character's growth into adulthood, derived from a Biblical story. Harold the King and A Hollow Crown by Helen Hollick both cover a reasonable number of years also, but they skip some time to get there.

#8

Sorry, read the thread title too quickly and missed the word 'historical!'

Another historical book which covers a large timespan in a shortish single volume is Capital by Maureen Duffy. This adopts the 'episodic' approach, leaping hundreds of years between episodes.

Evolution by Stephen Baxter covers a time frame of three to four billion years in one book.
;-)

And there are quite a lot of books covering two wildly different periods. One I read about five years ago is The Fanatic by James Robertson. The character is a present day guide who does an evening tour of Old Edinburgh and interweaved is the story of religious dissent in the 1600s. Perhaps it helps to know something of Scottish church history.

Here are a few historical fiction books that I've read over the last year or so that cover a long time frame. These were all written fairly recently.

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

All of them follow the life of one person.

Gone with the Wind covers Scarlett O'Hara's life from late teens through adulthood.

Thanks for even more suggestions. I have checked every one and have found plenty to keep me busy for quite a while. In the course of looking at all the suggestions, I have discovered that the genre I am thinking of is called 'biographical fiction'. I knew people wrote historical fiction about real people, but didn't realise it had a term of its own.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett is another as is The Autobiography of Henry the Eighth by Margaret George.

#18

If it's not been mentioned before, Little Big Man by Thomas Berger covers a very ling time period in the life of a single character, mixing historical fact and fiction.

The wonderful Captain Corelli's Mandolin covers one woman's life from the age of around 16-ish, in 1940, to somewhere in her 60s in the early 1980s. Set on the Greek island of Kefalonia, is not so much the number of years dealt with as the immense changes on the island from a small farming community to the days of mass tourism. Breathtaking! (Yes, I love this book.)

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I haven't read it in about 5 years. But I believe the story spans across 3 generations.

Gary Jenninings follows a character's life over a lifetime and he has that charcter explore prior history.
The main character in Aztec tells Spanish Conquistadors about his life that spans about a century and tells stories several centures before his own birth. Roots and many other books were patterned after East of Eden which covers about 4 generations. The Jennings method or the method mentioned by Thorold in message 7 cover much larger periods. Jennings uses a historian living in the distant past in Raptor and the Journeyer but be warned Jennings adds ample sex and violence like real life.

I just read a very positive review of Jaume Cabré's De stemmen van de Pamano, the Dutch translation of the Spanish novel Les veus del Pamano. An English translation is not (yet) available. The book is about the influence of the Spanish Civil War on the lives of the inhabitants of a small village in the Catalan Pyrenees and spans over 50 years. Guilt, penance, revenge. According to the reviewer (Ger Groot, in the NRC) it is written in the 19th century novel tradition but with 20th century techniques. (The author is writer of 9 novels, many film- and televisionscripts, essays, stories and books for children). The review was such that I am going to buy the book this weekend.

The touchstones don't do what they 're supposed to do. The book and the author are in Librarything!

How about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - time frame runs from 19thC (as far as I can remember) to some time in the far distant future.

Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven is supposed to last a long time, I think maybe 100 years if I remember correctly. I thought it looked interesting-its in my TBR pile.

In a Dark Wood Wandering/a Novel of the Middle Ages by Hella S. Haasse covers about 60 years.

it's quite amusing how this book came to be published in english. it's a dutch novel and was published in the late 1940s. an american postal employee who spoke little to no dutch learned of the book and asked the author if he could translate it. she agreed and he began work, only to die before he completed it. his translation was left in a briefcase in a closet and didn't surface until years later when his wife's apartment caught fire and their son went through the wreckage. he found the briefcase, dried out the contents (soaked from the fire hoses), contacted the author and completed the translation. it took about 40 years, but the book was finally published in english and, in my mind, was well worth the wait!

Melmg, what a nice story! And one befitting Hella Haase, who is the Grand Dame of Dutch historical fiction and also a very lovely lady. Recently much attention was paid to her work when she reached the age of ninety. For translations see:
http://www.hellahaasse.nl/boekboek/show/id=91292

The opening book in the Casca series by Barry Sadler covers 130 years or so from the crucifixion to the Battle of Ctesiphon in 163AD. Other books in the series vary in length of years covered but two stand out; Casca 7 The Damned and Casca 9 The Sentinel both cover over a generation because of the protagonist's immortality where he either retreats from the chaos of the collapse of the Roman Empire or becomes entombed in ice.

Somebody will have to remind me what it was but there is a book about London which starts in the Stone Age and comes right up to date - I guess that one probably takes the prize. Must admit that after about the third generation I got bored and gave up, which Is why I've forgotten what it was called or who it was by.

>30 Booksloth:, Could it have been London by Edward Rutherfurd?

Possibly. Does that do that?

I've only read Sarum, Russka, and Princes of Ireland, but his works generally start in pre-history and work through the present.

I bet that's the one then.

Rutherfurd and Michener's novels are the obvious ones from my collection. I am also currently reading Steven Saylor's Roma which covers a period of 1000 years. Less obviously, I am also reading Ayesha: The Return of She by Rider Haggard in which 16 years elapse in the travels of the leading characters between chapters 1 and 2.

I just finished reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, in which the main action takes place in three separate years - 1930, 1954, and sometime in the 1970s. It's all sort of jumbled up, though, so the passage of time really isn't addressed.

(edited to add the author's name)

I just finished The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, which covers a span of about 100 years - but most of the novel focuses on the last decade or so, the adolescence of the hero, who gradually finds out about the events of preceding generations that have shaped his life and caused his problems. Good book, though, and might be of interest to you.

There are, of course, many such books out there. I heartily recommend I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves.

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess is a great novel that follows the life of a novelist through greater part of the 20th century. It is a favorite of mine, and an excellent read.

The Book of Abraham by Marek Halter covers nearly 2000 years, from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. The novel follows a Jewish family by way of a family chronicle, a record of the family members and their experiences through the generations, which is passed down from father to eldest son, with each generation added to the chronicle. It tells you a lot about Jewish history over these two millennia, and apparently the chapters from the 15th century upwards are true, based on the actual chronicle kept by the author's family.

Mother London by Michael Moorcock follows three people from WWII through the late 80s, while the story's actual protagonist can be said to be the city of London itself.

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin follows a single character as well as a very strange, magical New York City roughly from the 1880s to the 1980s. A fine novel with some lovely writing, although the narrative gets a bit disjointed a couple of times.

Several of the novels in The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, such as Interview With The Vampire and The Vampire Lestat follow their immortal protagonists through centuries. Lestat is probably the best of these, although reading the first 3 together would make sense.

The House of the Spirits by Chilean writer Isabel Allende covers the entire life of one of its protagonists, the patriarch Esteban Trueba, and the women in his life, a span of more than 70 years.

The German writer Günther Grass wrote The Flounder, which covers a period of more than a thousand years.

I'm just about to finish The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which spans about 20 years, and is a wonderful read. There is also a hefty sequel called World Without End, which I'll certainly be picking up soon.

Edited to add that it's acyually over thirty years... I hadn't quite finished when I posted!

For something completely different: Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I suppose it only peripherally counts as "historical fiction," but it starts in the court of Elizabeth I and ends in the 20th century. Don't let hte subtitle, "A Biography," fool you. Unless you believe that someone could change gender and live for 350 years.

I've just been reading Greenlanders by Jane Smiley which covers around 70 years in the decline of the community of European Greenlanders (ie not Eskimo) in the late 14th century. It's written in the style of a Scandinavian saga. It took me about 100 pages to get my head around the style, but after that I really enjoyed it - it's extremely well-imagined and subtle (although often quite bleak).

You can try To Dance with Kings by Rosalind Laker

Liza's England by Pat Barker (alson known as The Century's Daughter
- covers the life and times of an English working-class woman from 1900 until her death in the 1980s

The Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog
- covers the birth and development of the Society of Friends (Quakers) from 17th through early 18th century

Another superb novel is Cecelia Holland's Great Maria, which covers probably around 30 years in a medieval woman's life. One of the particularly fine aspects of this novel is the way Holland takes Maria from a typically naive young teenager, not long before she married, to a mature woman capable of wresting a degree of power for herself from her Crusader lord husband. Well worth studying!

Fault Lines covers four generations of the same family from WWII till now through the narrative voice of six year olds.

Forever spans at least a couple of centuries, if not three!! Begins in Ireland and ends up in present day Manhattan, following the life of one man. Fascinating book, which contains elements of 'paranormal' in that the man is granted a certian type of 'immortality' by the Irish ancient gods........but this is just to establish his ability to live through Manhattan for that amount of type......

Mostly it is just a fantastic, vivid and tremendously detailed tale of Manhattan....I love it!!

The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood covers a big span of time (centuries and centuries) following an a blue stone.