Last year I read and reviewed Victoria Lamb’s debut novel The Queen’s Secret, which I enjoyed very much. Thus I’m delighted to be a part of the blog tour for its sequel, His Dark Lady. My review of the book will be up tomorrow, but today Victoria has a post for us on the subject of the kinds of research she did for His Dark Lady and how it informed her writing. I hope you enjoy this peek behind the curtains as much as I did.

His Dark Lady and Research

As someone who has always held Shakespeare in deep reverence, writing from our most famous poet’s point of view felt like an act of hubris. Yet from the first sentence written in his ‘voice’, I found myself surprisingly comfortable in his skin. What helped with this process was having done a great deal of research beforehand, both in London and in Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire, where I was living at the time. The core of my home research was the usual suspects from among excellent modern books on Shakespeare and on Tudor theatre, such as Ackroyd etc etc – as evidenced by my bibliography in His Dark Lady.

I don’t tend to consult original primary sources, such as letters, journals or manuscripts, as it’s simply not necessary for a work of fiction. Reproductions or excerpts are more than adequate for most purposes. Besides which, I am not an historian. My academic training is in the fields of English Literature and Ancient Languages – the latter mostly in verse translation, which is a hobby of mine. But where two or more historians disagree, I may do a little more digging amongst primary sources, to see if I can turn up the source of their disgreement. I am lucky enough to be entitled to a free Bodleian Library Reader’s Card for life, one of the perks of Oxford matriculation, and have spent many happy hours in the beautiful Radcliffe Camera, my preferred reading room at the Bodleian. Though much of the material I consult is now available online, or at specialist county or university libraries. We are very lucky to be living in an age where research has never been so easy – if you know where to look, and which sources are trustworthy.

One important skill to develop when researching an historical novel is synthesis. There can be a huge amount of information to take on board, some of it bewilderingly contradictory. It can be daunting to distill your research down to a single plot that takes in historical, cultural and familial backgrounds as well as what we know about each individual in your novel. As with translation, something is always lost when you fictionalise a real life: compromises must be made, events conflated, information omitted. Otherwise you would never begin writing, or you would end up with something to rival the size and complexity of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’.

Another vital element is a physical and geographical understanding of the novel’s setting. When writing about a vanished past – Tudor London, for instance – this involves the study of old maps and a spirited attempt to recreate the past in my mind as I wander about the current site. (This occasionally garners odd looks from passers-by.) For His Dark Lady, I made numerous research trips to Shakespeare-related houses in Stratford, maintained by the Birthplace Trust. I also visited London, and Southwark in particular. No amount of reading can tell you what it feels like to be part of an audience at a Tudor theatre, or to eat a good dinner before wandering alongside the busy River Thames on Bankside. As a novelist, you must use your imagination, but base it on as close an approximation to real life as you can manage. I’m not keen on re-enactment though as a means of research, as I feel it interferes when getting ‘inside’ an historical character’s head – whose experiences will have been very different to your own at a modern re-enactment event.

Ultimately, my own historical research focuses around making connections between the past and our own lives today. If we can’t do this, as historical novelists, what is the point of setting our fiction in the past?

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Author Bio
Victoria Lamb is a novelist with two historical series set in the Tudor era, one for adults and one for Young Adult readers.

Born in Essex in the mid-sixties, Victoria is the middle daughter of bestselling novelist Charlotte Lamb and the classical biographer Richard Holland. When the family later moved to the peaceful Isle of Man, Victoria was brought up in rural surroundings in a home full of books.

She returned to England for her education as an adult, and married there. While living in Warwickshire, affectionately known as Shakespeare Country, she began writing The Queen’s Secret, a novel set at nearby Kenilworth Castle during an epic visit by Queen Elizabeth I in 1575.

Victoria now lives in Cornwall with her husband, four of her five children, and a highly energetic Irish Red Setter. In her leisure time, she has been known to write poetry and go for long walks across the moors.

You can find Victoria on her website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Below you can find the schedule for Victoria’s blog tour. Don’t forget to check out the other blogs for reviews, guest posts, interviews, and giveaways!