Even at the height of its popularity in the early nineteenth century the historical novel faced criticism at many levels. After its predominance in the 1810s and 1820s writers and historians shunned it as a travesty of their respective disciplines. Even so, the historical novel has frequently attracted a wide-ranging public right up to the present day. Brian Hamnett examines key novels, by authors including Scott, Balzac, Manzoni, Dickens, Eliot, Flaubert, Fontane, Galdós, and Tolstoy, revealing the contradictions inherent in this form of fiction and exposing the challenges writers faced in attempting to represent a reality that linked past and present.