Overview

This volume focuses on historical fiction written by and for women, approximately, in the last 30 years and across the entire globe. It comprises three parts. Part 1 draws on the theme of the inner life and experiences of the female historical figure, Part 2 is concerned with genre-bending that fuels the construction of the vast majority of story worlds within the genre, and Part 3 with the idea of unusual angles that the historical fiction storytelling employs

Full Product Details

Author:   Alicja Bemben ,  Michael Joseph
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
ISBN:  

9781032958224

ISBN 10:   1032958227
Pages:   200
Publication Date:   29 September 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

List of Contributors Introduction: The Golden Age of Historical Fiction: Women’s Fictionalizations of the Historical Past from a Global Perspective Alicja Bemben and Michael Joseph Part I. 21st-Century Heroines Chapter 1. Representation of the First Turkish Woman Dramatist’s Life on the Stage: Bilgesu Erenus’s The Stigmatised Coffin (Yaftali Tabut) Gülşen Sayin Chapter 2. Bad Faith and Existential Authenticity in Joanne Joseph’s Children of Sugarcane Alicja Bemben Chapter 3. Who Holds the Power? Gendered Experiences of Greatness in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun Aleksandra Mzyk Chapter 4. Feminism Meets Enterprise: Gentleman Jack’s Anne Lister and Her Dual Legacy? Paulina Hacaś Part II. Genre Experiments and the Social Change Chapter 5. Story Writing and Ghost Summoning in Ghada al-Samman’s The Impossible Story and Farewell, Damascus Zaina Ujayli Chapter 6. On the Fringes of Realism. Bizarre World in the Recent Polish Historical Fiction Dariusz Piechota Chapter 7. “American Poison”: The Buccaneers (2023) and the Open-Ended Potential of Historical Romance Maria Ogórek Part III. (En)Gendering and Sexualising the Past Chapter 8. Bring Up the Bodies: Hilary Mantel’s Romancing of History Tiziana Ingravallo Chapter 9. The WoMen of Troy: The Reflection of L’autre Bisexualité in Pat Barker’s Historical Novel, The Women of Troy Merve Altin Chapter 10. Fingersmith and the Pornography of the Past that Never Was Justyna Jajszczok Index

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Author Information

Alicja Bemben is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of English, the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. She is a co-organiser of various academic conferences and events, has co-edited several monographs, and authored a number of texts dealing with historiography (especially in the vein of Hayden White), historical novels (especially by Robert Graves), and their relationships. She cooperates with several journals, is a member of a few societies and research groups, and has coordinated a number of scientific projects. Michael Joseph retired as Rare Books Librarian and Full Professor, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is the author of The Teaching Guide to the Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature (2005), over 65 scholarly texts (articles, book chapters, reviews, etc.) and various novels, books of short stories, and poetry. He is an editor of Handmade Literacies: Special Issue of The Lion and the Unicorn, and the Founding Director of the New Jersey Book Arts Symposium. His recent publications include “Making Video Poems from Poems Made from Diary Entries Made from Dreams” in Book 2.0 (2025, 12 (1–2)), Omni-Puss in Boots (2025), The Marvelous Real in a Land of Dreams (2024), and “Children’s Poetry” in The Routledge Companion to Children's Literature (2023). In 2023, he was asked to participate in a discussion of contemporary children’s poetry, which appears as chapter 29, “Contemporary Children’s Poetry: A Colloquy” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Contemporary American Poetry (2023). Since 2016, he has been the Editor of The Robert Graves Review (formerly Gravesiana).

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