Professional authors find themselves divided into different camps, often classified as genres – crime and thrillers, romance, historical, fantasy – but although these may sound like the enjoyable indulgence of a chosen fancy, any fiction author of this kind will get seriously stuck into research. It may even be the kind of background work required that draws a writer to a genre, or puts them off trying their hand. I myself would pass up the chance to write an historical naval story because I could not face carrying around all the vital details of rigging and mechanics on a ship – and indeed, woe betide the airforce novelist who gets the calibre of fighter plane’s wing-guns wrong, or even the manufacturer of the shell-casing…
It is not, of course, all nuts and bolts. Romance may look frilly at times, but the grande dame of the historical genre, Georgette Heyer, carries a formidable reputation for her knowledge of the intricacies of costume and stylish speech; and a writer of contemporary romance may need to research breeds of dog, or the train timetable between Horsham and London, to make some relatively small thing work out well in addition to other more fundamental elements of the tale. Writers get deeply enmeshed in research, and often talk about falling
down a ‘rabbit-hole’ as they get distracted by a fascination with some initially relevant topic that will not, ultimately, add much to their novel.
The internet has certainly made home-based research far easier, since the internet has now expanded to include all kinds of sources that are deeply obscure on all kinds of subjects: reprints of hitherto unavailable pamphlets and books, archive collections containing that ever-so-vital and revealing letter, and treasure trove of all and totally unexpected kinds. A potential black hole, rather than a rabbit-hole.
But writers still often need to travel, and research on the ground is a vital part of the creation of many novels. I had spent many years on holidays in Brittany, across the water from my home county of Devon, before I turned to fiction, and my relaxing explorations over time gave me knowledge of the fields and woods, the towns and villages, the stunning coastline, and gradually the buildings and way of life of earlier times. Devon was also at hand, and in various casual jobs I travelled across the county, popping up all over the place, and poking my nose down remote lanes, crossing fields and standing in ancient barns out of the rain.
Yet whether it is research conducted from home, or trodden out on the ground, one thing is often missing, or at least not available in the form that you want it, and that is a picture of the place that interests you in the historical moment in which you have hung your story. That is self-evidently all the more probable before the age of photography, and so as a writer whose novels are set in the late eighteenth century I have found myself excited by the recent discovery of two visual sources previously unknown to me. They are both in their own way
quite astonishing.
The first came to me via the kind intervention of my wife’s mother, who looked for a book for me on the history of the Isle of Wight, where I had set some of the final scenes of my fourth novel, Moonlight at Cuckmere Haven, which concludes the Wentworth saga and which will be published in the autumn of 2024. Included in the short book were several illustrations by the artist and cartoonist Thomas Rowlandson, who had taken trips to the Island with a couple of friends, notably in the 1790s. These lively sketches and watercolours of scenes from the Island in the 1790s were peopled with soldiers and islanders, showing boats and carts and surroundings and landscapes. Wonderful!
The second source was given to me as a present by my wife, and consists of four stunning volumes of Travels in Georgian Devon by the Reverend John Swete, copiously illustrated in watercolours by the reverend gentleman himself, who took himself around the landscapes and private houses of the gentry, once again – and conveniently for me – in the 1790s.
So my eye can wander with some confidence across scenes from the precise period in which my novels are set, and feel tolerably secure and satisfied that I am allowing more recent intrusions to fade back and away as I try to envisage actions by characters, and to soak up the pace of life, the emptiness at times of the landscape, of housing and of people, the small scale of villages and even small towns.
It is a lucky chance. The Isle of Wight Heritage Service has generously given me permission to reproduce three of the drawings from the Rowlandson collection it holds, which I have done on a post on my Facebook page. They are delightful on their own account, and if you enjoy historical novels then they give a rare flavour of people and lives and boats at the very time of which you are reading. Directions are given on that Facebook post for you to be able to access the collection, with further thanks to the Heritage Service for their help and
permission. Travels in Georgian Devon is available in four volumes, edited by Margery Rowe and Todd Gray, and published by Devon Books in 1998.
Graham Ley 