What's wrong with medieval history publishing?

Honest reflections on a recent bookstore trip - with a tiny sprinkle of hope

I recently visited a popular British bookstore, Waterstones, filled with excitement at the prospect of having ten childfree minutes browsing beyond the realms of picture books, board books, and books with noisy buttons.

Thanks to a grandparent rushing my fifteen-month-old around the aisles of a nearby M&S Food Hall, I could indulge in a slow perusal of grown up books, taking the time to pick them up, turn them over, sift through a few pages of each.

I was so excited.

Yet, a few minutes into my visit, that excitement had turned to frustration.

The shelves were full of books - but they all seemed to be the same. Take a look at the photo below of the medieval British history section: they are all (or at least mostly) about kings or battles.

Kings or battles!

The very topics I try to keep from on

Telling Their Tales

because they are so overdone.

What on earth?!

As a PhD student, I know that there is so much interesting research being done on a truly diverse range of topics. My own thesis will focus on the role of women in the conversion to Christianity of England and Francia, looking to archaeology to flesh out the incidental references preserved in written sources. We are actively looking to tell the untold stories because we know that the sidelining of these individuals doesn’t mean they weren’t intimately involved. They just didn’t make it into the written record.

Want to read more about this? Check out the articles below where I’ve dived into these topics further.

The Hidden History of Female Bed Burials in Early Medieval England

Beginning her political career in the cradle

Then there’s the unbelievable diversity of research topics over in the Directory of the

Society of History Writers

.

If all this exists as research interests, why has this diversity not made it onto the shelves of popular bookstores?

I made a plea recently to history publishers, asking them ‘to commission more stories that open up the lives of medieval individuals who weren’t kings. Please, please, please: those stories are so overdone. Give the spotlight to others worthy of having their tales told.’

I stand by this plea.

I did see a few books worthy of mention here though.

Non-fiction

Many publishers would have you believe that the only significant event in Anglo-Saxon history was William the Conqueror’s 1066 invasion, and that the only significant person was Alfred the Great.

Not so! This was a deeply connected world with a rich cultural heritage at all levels.

A more nuanced approach needs to be taken with these subjects, however, with a broader evidence base than simply the written sources: landscape archaeology, place names, excavation reports, myths, for example.

These two books do this exceptionally well:

Recovered voices? Stories from the deep past

Frost must freeze, glistening ice-clear

And these titles in Waterstones intrigued me, as books that possibly (I haven’t read them) approach the subject matter of early medieval Britain from a more interesting angle:

Fiction

My biggest gripe with medieval historical fiction is that its very difficult to find novels that aren’t set in the world of kings and queens (I realise the irony in having spent a year writing a serialised historical fiction novel about a queen, which you can read HERE).

This might be due to the nature of the surviving written sources - but I’m going to call this out as lazy historical research. If we turn to archaeology, there is an abundance of material that allows us to reconstruct, in quite minute detail, the lives of ‘ordinary’ men and women, the countless individuals whose names have been lost to time but whose possessions, and bodies, survive. We could write some really relatable tales of Anglo-Saxon village life if we worked hard to go beyond Bede for our picture of this time, which is what I tried to do with these two miniseries recently:

The Sagas: Table of Contents

As with the fiction titles above, however, these historical fiction tales caught my eye and might (again, I haven’t read them) be worth a try:

Incidentally, I think the world of classics & ancient history does this much better than us medievallists. My recent read of Glorious Exploits (review HERE) convinced me of this and there is an abundance of classical historical fiction works that sound amazing.

And the one book I did buy?

I know, I know, it’s a princess story.

And I said I didn’t want those.

But ya girl’s clearly limited on what she can pick up in bookstores these days, and I just wasn’t quite ready for another novel set in Ancient Greece!

I was mostly intrigued to try out an author I know has written a lot of novels set in early medieval Britain, and saw the potential for a full-series-binge. The subject matter, however, I think makes for quite a limited readership (I can’t imagine princess love stories are everyone’s cup of tea).

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Do you have any recent medieval historical reads that are worth picking up?

Fiction or non-fiction? Drop a comment below with your recommendations and let’s see if we can build a resource for others to consult when, like me, they find themselves bewildered in a book shop.

And maybe

Katie Clapham

can help us out, with her extensive book shop experience!

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In October, our cosy book club begins!

Want to dive deep into a book that I think really is worth your time?

We’ll be starting a slow read of Storylands by Amy Jeffs on 3rd October. I would love to have you join our small community as we journey through this book together, sharing insights and building relationships along the way.