English Passengers by Matthew Kneale (Penguin)

Time period: 1850s

Setting: Isle of Man, UK and Tasmania, Australia

Characters: Rum smugglers, eccentric Englishmen, a reverend, an aboriginal man named Peevay

A smuggling operation has its stock confiscated and have to pivot to chartering, taken up by two hopeful circumnavigators. One believes he will find the Garden of Eden, the other has an insidious agenda.

While they are on their journey across the seas, Peevay tells of the British colonies and their impact on aboriginal way of life.

Matthew Kneale is a scholar of modern history. English Passengers won the Whitbread Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (HarperCollins)

Time period: 1890s

Setting: London and Colchester, UK

Characters: A newly-widowed society mother turned naturalist, an overly-curious child, and a vicar’s son.

Cora Seaborn was not happily married when her husband passed away and now, with her son Francis in tow, she moves to Essex for some fresh air. Here, she learns of the mythical Essex Serpent said to lurk in the Aldwinter marshes.

Fascinated, budding naturalist Cora sets out to find the supposedly man-eating beast, and meets a handsome vicar’s son who is fighting moral panic as well as desire.

Sarah Perry has written four novels, is Chancellor of the University of Essex and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Essex Serpent is her highly acclaimed second novel and has been adapted for a limited series on Apple TV+.

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (Vintage)

Time period: 16th century

Setting: The Mughal Empire, India and Renaissance Florence, Italy

Characters: A European traveller with yellow hair, an emperor and a sorcerer named Lady Black Eyes

With a sensuous mixture of fable and fact, this folklore-inspired novel combines medieval mysticism with European and East-Asian history. The story follows a young European man who claims to be royalty, the son of Qara Köz, or ‘Lady Black Eyes’ who has a journey all her own.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Penguin)

Time period: 1830s

Setting: Jamaica

Characters: An Englishman and an heiress

Inspired by Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, this story follows a rich Creole woman who marries an Englishman. Rumours soon begin to spread and madness is only around the corner. Set against the backdrop of colonialism, it’s a classic story told through a new lens that challenges the themes of identity, belonging and love.

The Giant, O’Brien by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)

Time period: 1780s

Setting: London

Characters: An Irish Giant, a Scottish surgeon, and a motley crew of London locals.

Centred around the cut-throat culture of body snatching (à la Burke and Hare) and Irish folktales, poet Charles O’Brien, inspired by the real-life giant Charles Byrne, finds himself the target of an anatomist who would love to get his hands on some bigger-than-average bones. Darkly funny and with literary prowess, from the author of Wolf Hall.

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (Headline)

Time period: 1810s and 1970s

Setting: Los Angeles and Maryland, USA

Characters: A budding writer turned time-travelling life-saver, a drowning boy, and a free ancestor.

When Dana wakes up in antebellum Maryland after having major surgery, she gets the culture shock of a lifetime. Hailed as one of the greatest Black literary works, Kindred encompasses slavery, resilience, power, science fiction, legacy and oppression.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)

Time period: 1850s

Setting: Wyoming and Tennessee, USA

Characters: An Irish immigrant, a soldier and a young girl of the Sioux tribe.

Escaping the Great Famine in Ireland, Thomas McNulty joins the US Army to fight in the Indian Wars where he meets a fellow orphan named John Cole. Together, they find friendship, love, family and hardship while the country around them descends into Civil War.

The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore (Granta)

Time period: 1640s

Setting: Essex

Characters: A disenchanted but infatuated leader, a handsome clerk, a probing stranger and a village full of women.

With most of the men in the village away fighting, unmarried Rebecca West finds life exceedingly dull until the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General arrives. This is a story of mass-hysteria, rampant misogyny, betrayal and the thrill of power told around the witch trials of 17th century England.

Regeneration by Pat Barker (Penguin)

Time period: 1910s

Setting: Scotland

Characters: An Army psychiatrist, two poets and a mute.

After three years of the Great War, William Rivers is charged with rehabilitating soldiers brutalised by the Front. At a hospital close to Edinburgh, he studies the effects of shell-shock on the mind and body, using the newly developing psychology of Freud and what is now known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound)

Time period: 1060s

Setting: Lincolnshire

Characters: An Anglo-Saxon looking for revenge and the Norman invaders

Written in Anglish (a combination of Old English and Modern English), this story chronicles the invasion of William the Conqueror’s landgrab of England from an Anglo-Saxon perspective. After his family dies at the hands of Norman soldiers, Buccmaster of Holland wages his own war in the hills of Lincolnshire as a guerrilla force against the invasion.

Imogen Hermes Gowar is the author of the bestselling novel The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, which won a Betty Trask Prize and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Sunday Times Young Writer Award.

She’s published a variety of short fiction as well as an augmented reality walking tour of medieval Norwich, Eleanor. She’s particularly interested in how we write the past, and the dazzling variety of form and style that exists within the genre of historical fiction. Imogen has taught creative writing for Arvon, The Literary Consultancy, and The Novelry, among many others.

Image © Jamie Barrs