SOURCE: "The Kinds of Historical Fiction: An Essay in Definition and Methodology," in Genre, Vol. XII, No. 3, Fall, 1979, pp. 333-55.

In the following essay, Turner identifies three categories of historical fiction—documented, invented, and disguised historical novels—and discusses the boundaries between history and fiction.

"Everyone knows what a historical novel is; perhaps that is why few have volunteered to define it in print" [Avrom Fleishman, The English Historical Novel: Walter Scott to Virginia Woolf 1971]. So begins Avrom Fleishman's foray into the morass of defining historical fiction. Now there is, without doubt, a significant portion of truth in this disarming gambit: except for an occasional skirmish over how far back a novel must be set to count as history, critics have assumed that the term "historical novel" effectively explains itself. But the remainder of Fleishman's theoretical discussion—not to mention the ensuing chapters on individual novels—attests to...