THE HISTORICAL NOVEL CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: Fetter Lane C. F. CLAY, Manager NEW YORK The Macmillan Co. BOMBAY, CALCUTTA and MADRAS Macmillan and Co., Ltd. TORONTO The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. TOKYO Maruzen-Kabushiki-Kaisha All rights reserved THE HISTORICAL NOVEL ❦❦ AN ESSAY BY H. BUTTERFIELD FELLOW OF PETERHOUSE [Illustration] CAMBRIDGE: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS: MCMXXIV PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PREFACE The following essay, which was awarded the Le Bas Prize for 1923, is an attempt to find some relation between historical novels on the one hand and history treated as a study on the other; and, further, to work out a method of critical approach. It does not defend historical fiction against the historian; it welcomes this form of art from his point of view, finding its justification in the character of history itself. It seeks to estimate the novel as a work of resurrection, a form of “history,” a way of treating the past. In this it does not pretend to be exhaustive, but puts forward one aspect of the problem and attempts to track down the peculiar virtue of fiction as the gateway to the past. H. B. _April 1924_ I Wordsworth touches the true mood of romantic regret when he writes “_Of old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago._”