The Historical Novel and the French Romantics
Once the Romantic Movement had reached France, writes J.H.M. Salmon, many writers, inspired by the Waverley novels, began to look for exciting subjects in the scenes of French history.
Not many historians admit to a liking for historical novels, and the few that do so are usually shamefaced about it. This is not surprising, for the genre suggests a combination of opposites: fiction and truth, imagination and reality. The authors of the most acclaimed historical novels of the French Romantic period, Vigny, Merimee and Hugo, speculated about these contradictions and concluded that the novel could be a more plausible method for conveying a certain kind of historical truth than plain history.
Among the reasons for their success were the simultaneous development of historical drama, the popularity of Sir Walter Scott in France, and the fact that they received encouragement, rather than hostility, from the historians of the day. All of these things were part of the climate of public opinion that bred the Romanticism of the 1820s.
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