10 Historical Fictions About Famous Writers

Emily Brontë is a woman of her own means. Intelligent and incredibly independent, she refuses to adhere to the rigid bounds of society, particularly the notion that she must wed.

But one day, all that Emily once believed is flipped on its head with the arrival of a clergyman named William Weightman.

When a cadet hangs himself at West Point Academy in 1830, no one is surprised. The regimen is harsh, and not everyone can take it. 

But when someone breaks into the room where the body is kept and steals the heart, the Academy calls former detective Augustus Landor to investigate. While interviewing the cadet’s acquaintances, he finds an eager assistant in one: a young man named Edgar Allan Poe. 

As the two investigate, they are drawn deep into the world of secret societies, ritual sacrifice, and death. And the closer they get to the truth, the more their own secrets become dangerous weapons that might destroy them both.

From the author of A Clockwork Orange comes a remarkable look into Shakespeare’s love life.

Beginning with his young experiences with sex, into his time as a writer extraordinaire, this tale is playful and offers an insightful perspective into the time period.

In 1926, after learning that her husband was having an affair, Agatha Christie boarded a train to visit her literary agent in London. Distracted, she feels pressure on her back before she suddenly falls towards an incoming train. 

Thankfully, she’s pulled to safety at the last moment, but the man isn’t rescuing her—he’s blackmailing her. She has a talent for murder, and he wants to use it. 

But writing about murder is far different than committing one. And if Agatha wants to survive, she has to use her clever mind to outmaneuver a killer.

Described by New York Times-bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler as a “deeply imagined and deeply moving novel,” author Gill Hornby describes in vivid detail the life of Cassandra, Jane Austen’s sister.

Two decades after his sister’s death, Cassandra returns to their village, in the hopes of finding letters that not only hold secrets about Jane, but also about herself. Once found, she must decide if she’ll let the world into their legacy, or set them aflame…

The French Revolution in 1792 is in full swing, and not even London can avoid its bloody aftermath. One family, the Kellaways, is forced to move to the city, where the youngest, Jem, makes a friend in the street-smart Maggie. 

But when the two cross paths with their neighbor, poet William Blake, their lives change forever. It’s an unpredictable time, though, and soon the two adolescents find that Blake might be the only adult who can guide them into adulthood.

In return, their journey inspires Blake to create a piece of work that will cement his poetic genius in history.

In Boston, 1865, a group of poets and professors worked tirelessly to create America’s first translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. It’s no easy task. Especially with a powerful group at Harvard working against them, who believe Dante’s work should be kept in obscurity. 

But when a series of murders strikes, the group realizes that someone is recreating Hell’s punishments from Inferno. If the link between Dante and the murders is discovered, their work will never see the light of day.

Working to protect their secret, the group sets out to find the killer, only to discover that he’s so much closer than any of them ever imagined.

Love isn’t easy in 1920. At least, that’s what Hadley Richardson believes. That is, until she’s swept into a whirlwind romance with Ernest Hemingway. 

Shortly after they’re married, the couple heads to Paris, where they encounter Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. But Paris during the Jazz Age is more than either of them was prepared for. 

As Ernest struggles with his writing, Hadley tries to keep their marriage together until a deception threatens to devastate everything they’ve built together.

Before F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first book, he was a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. That’s where he met seventeen-year-old Zelda Sayre, a beautiful but reckless Southern belle. 

He’s entirely unsuitable for her hand, but Zelda falls for him anyway. And when he sells his first novel, Zelda boards a train, marries him, and faces their future with the same reckless abandon.

After Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her wandering husband and heads to Belgium, tragedy strikes. She finds herself in a quiet artist community in France with her three children and a nanny, where she is meant to rest and recover.

There, she meets a young lawyer, ten years younger than she is. Robert Louis Stevenson is immediately taken with Fanny, and it’s only a matter of time before she is swept into his charms. They embark on a passionate love affair filled with both light and darkness that lasts decades.