historical fiction

English

Noun

historical fiction (uncountable)

1. Fiction based on real historical events, but in which the characters are not real, and the minor events may not be realistic.
   • 2013, Kate Mitchell, Nicola Parsons, editors, Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past, Springer, →ISBN, page 21:

     For some, historical fiction should be read as a type of history, for others, a type of fiction. Only gradually did a third term develop that synthesised the two: historical fiction needed to be read as historical fiction, as its own distinct genre that combined features of the novel with features of historical works.

See also

• historiographic metafiction
• metahistorical romance
• real person fiction