Winston Graham’s last five Poldark novels & 18th century historical fiction

Romola Garai as Gwendoleth Harleth in Daniel Deronda (2002 scripted Andrew Davies, directed by Tom Hooper, George Eliot’s 19th century then contempoary masterpiece) — Garai is found in historical films from all sorts of sources

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve been meaning to report that I’ve written twice more about Winston Graham’s Poldark novels: a new slant and real qualifications about what I said the first time round on his second quartet, or, to put it another way, Upon rereading The Stranger from the Sea and The Miller’s Dance; and then Rereading and Outlining The Loving Cup and The Twisted Sword. I then linked both blogs to my Winston Graham mostly Poldark website.

I’m almost there with a second reading of Graham’s Bella, which I’ve discovered almost makes a central use of history: both about the discoveries and importation into the UK of great apes, the training of singers and the nature of a career on the stage at the turn of the 18th into the 19th century and how the frequent pretense of legitimacy for children born to mothers whose fathers were not their claimed legal fathers and bigamy existed in tension with the family-patronage, private property through primogeniture systems of the era.

I tried to write about the centrality of history in the later Poldark books at their society message board or facebook site said to be about these novels, the first two mini-series. But unhappily have discovered myself thwarted on both sites. There has been no serious talk about these books ever on either it seems (nothing scholarly, nothing academic) and the people are not used to it. I wrote of the hybrid nature of historical fiction (part actual history which can be trusted), of the particularly disquieting use of unconventional transgressive sex in the books. Clowance sustains a bigamous relationship; another how all 12 novels imitate 18th century novels’ plot-designs, type scenes and characters and themes while presenting tactfully realistically psychological support, then adjusting to today’s norms in popular visual media — as 18th century films imitate one another.

Garai as Barbara Spooner Wilberforce’s wife in the (since Mrs Siddon’s portrait in upper class lady’s clothes) signature Gainsborough studio hat, an extravaganza (from 2006 Amazing Grace)

Quickly a petty tenacious bully resentful of my (to her) apparently offensive (I can never figure out what’s offensive) postings on the facebook was able to delete my last posting on the message board on the grounds it was off-topic. Ah, I then realized that the playful pseudonyms which seemed so delightful to me also can allow non-accountability. “Nampara Girl” used the same paragraphs as Karen Knight on facebook so was none other than the woman in the other bit of cyberspace who managed to sneer at me and impugn my character when I said I would no longer post — “what you don’t want to be challenged?” says she in this self-righteous tone. On the facebook page I spoke back forthrightly saying she had written an insinuating (I didn’t use the word snide) remark when I had never said anything about her character and was attacking my honesty and sincerity. So she was getting back. All I could do then on the Literary Board was point out I was on topic, describe the nature of her behavior, motives and power and (so to speak) walk away.

Positions are all in cyberspace communities. Who can control, censor, withhold, delete a message. At core (as can be seen in Austen studies, in various cult groups), it’s virtually impossible to wrench a body of writing out of its popular readership’s use of it. Winston Graham found this when he tried to persuade the larger indifferent public that the 1996 film adaptation of his book was a worthy new start for filming the later books; he writes in his Memoirs of a Private Man that he could not get beyond the vilification of the new film by the cult tenaciously wedded to the 1970s mini-series. An important social lesson about how what one writes is taken from you once you put it out in the social world and encountering intransigent cult readerships.

So the dream of doing a genuinely historical handbook (a la Patrick O’Brien books) is out. If I’m to write about this I must stick to blogs and my website for now, but eventually (or again) look out for panels and groups who study historical fiction and then how how the Poldarks enact and brilliantly transcend the two also. And I can try my historical fiction of Elizabeth’s Story. A third outlet is to try to write something on the novels in the semi-popular essay kind for History Today. Here I know no one (a usual situation for me) and experience in publishing articles shows me the truly “blind article” submitted and chosen is a myth.

I set aside a unit in my library, a shelf all their own for historical fiction and women’s historical fiction. I repeatedly have trouble remembering my books since I often do not recall the author or even the exact title of the book, but simply that it’s on the subject of historical fiction from this or that angle.

Right now these are:

Beasley, Faith. Revising Memory: Womens’ Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth Century France.

Bird, Stephanie. Recasting Historical Fiction: Female Identity German Biographical Fiction.

Fleischman, Avrom. The English Historical Novel: Walter Scott to Virginia Woolf.

Groot, Jermone de. The Historical Novel.

Harman, Leah. The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England.

Hughes, Helen. The Historical Romance.

Keen, Suzanne. Romances of the Archives in Contemporary British Fiction. Also her “The Historical Turn” in James E. English’s Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fictionn.

Looser, Devoney. British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820.

Lukacs, George. The Historical Novel.

Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel.

Sanders, Andrew. The Victorian Historical Novel, 1840-80.

White, Hayden. The Content of the form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation.

Zlotnick, Susan. Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution.

Graham writes about his use of historical fiction in his Poldark’s Cornwall and I’ve discovered that other historical novelists write about theirs. He identifies three types and my friend Nick added a fourth. Graham does not as some woman have write history books as personal travel writing, a subject I’ve never seen treated in any essay. Of possible interest too are studies of historical films: Pam Cook, Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity. David Ellis, Hollywood’s History Films, Andrew Higson, English Heritage, English Cinema. History writing is ever sliding off into writing about people in costume, writing political novels (you are looking for a usable past for the present).

Garai as Sugar in Crimson Petal and White (from Michael Faber’s 20th century neo-Victorian novel) – this one I note has that strange thing done to it, bits pulled out and re-strung to highly romantic music which sentimentalizes the mood & degrades the film’s meaning

As you can see, I am especially interested in how women writing historical fiction has changed its nature, downgraded its respectability — by the injection of romance and feminist thought in which Graham participates by the way and also various mystery-suspense motifs and formula. In rewritten novels as projecting the history of a previous era. Again these later are seen far more heavily in the last 5 novels (almost not at all in the first 7). I am also interested in the serious use of film for history and how its costume aspects make it relevant to us today, speak to us today. I’ve this past months been steadily watching first all 26 hour long episodes of the 1967 Forsyte Saga and now I’ve just finished Part 8 of 13 parts of the 2002 version. For each one making summaries and saving stills.

So that’s where I am tonight. Tomorrow we are going off to the annual East Central 18th century conference, our 11th, this one in Baltimore, the Inner Harbor and I hope to come back with much to tell of what I heard and learned.

Garai, the much (unfairly) punished & poignant Briony in Ian McEwan’s 2007 Atonement (anti-Clarissa rewrite of Richardson’s Clarissa)

Ellen