Celebrating Women’s History Month at Read-A-Romance!
Since some of my favorite books are set in a variety of historical time-periods, I thought it would be fun to check in with some great authors in romance and women’s historical fiction, and explore their connection to history. Since the female perspective in history and fiction has been ignored so often, for so long, I find it heartening to see so many books representing romance and/or women’s history, telling such mesmerizing stories against the backdrop of some of the most intriguing and pivotal moments in time. I hope you find these essays as fascinating and fun as I do. (You can see the full calendar of authors here.)
Did you miss Read-A-Romance Month in August? Be sure to check out all the great “Joy of Romance” essays at the 2015 Calendar and if you’d like, you can follow RARM on Facebook.
The Power of Women in History
I have never been able to decide if I love history or storytelling more. For me, telling a human story is the best way
of accessing history and making it accessible to others. History was not lived as important dates, great men, and analysis of cause and consequence, as it appears in the history books. History is real lives, real stories, real people. I am fortunate enough to work in the museums and heritage sector for my day job. Our business is telling the stories of history, taking buildings and objects and finding ways of making them speak to visitors. I love it. And it is always the women I think of, living their lives in the same spaces as me, just in another time.
Much of my inspiration, as a writer of historical fiction, is the same. When I look at history, I see the stories waiting to be told. And they are the stories of the ordinary people, the ones not recorded in the history books. So often, these are the women. This is amplified in my choice to write about queer woman and same-sex romance. Women’s stories are often barely visible in historical accounts. Queer women’s stories are almost entirely erased. Women have always fallen in love and lust with each other but it was a story very few told and even less wrote down for posterity. My aim is to write the stories of women who were really just like me, living in a time before and therefore to give colour and voice to the past. In doing so I believe I can also demonstrate that the past isn’t a far off place. Time is a continuum, we are the daughters of the women of history. I want to tell the undiscovered stories by imagining what their lives could have been. In the novels where I have combined historical and contemporary stories in one novel, this is explicit. Times change but love really doesn’t.
My latest novel, Fragile Wings, is set in London in the 1920s. Although the pages are full of the glamour and 
excitement of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, I set this in the context of the aftermath of the First World War, the characters and their relationships are all affected by the conflict. The 1914-1918 war was a political and military event. But the social impact, well into the following decade, was huge. The focus is so often on the tragedy of the soldiers who lost their lives in the conflict. And so it should be. But this should not overshadow the huge fracture the war caused in culture and society and the dramatic impact it had on women’s lives in particular. It was, perhaps, the biggest turning point in women’s rights ever seen in the United Kingdom.
Women worked in roles they’d never been thought capable of, while the men were away fighting. As a result, in 1919, The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their gender. Women were allowed to vote for the first time in 1918 and to stand for Parliament. They were able to serve on juries in 1920 and the first female barrister was called to the bar in 1922. By 1928, all women were allowed to vote, amongst other victories on the path to equality, including being treated equally by the divorce courts and the first female police officers.
The history books tell us that when the men came back from war, women reverted to their traditional roles – wives, mothers, domestic servants. But the reality is that what was done could not be undone. The adventurous women of wartime became the ‘flappers’ of the 1920s – the short hair, short skirts, drinking, smoking and Charleston dancing were the outward signs of a hard won leap forward in liberty. Many women would not marry, due to the huge numbers of men who were lost, and became what history calls ‘surplus women.’ It has been estimated that there were two million of them. I did not want to see this as a tragedy. Many women thrived in their independent roles 
and began to aspire to something more than their mothers and grandmothers had done. This also brought more freedom to love and be loved and a determination to be true to one’s self.
In seeking to tell the stories of these women in my fiction, a romance between two of them emerged and blossomed and brought light and love into a picture of a society stumbling shell-shocked and cynical into the post-war age. The joy of writing romance between women is that I do not have to deviate from telling HerStory at all to dwell on a male love interest. I can bring two different women, their triumphs and tragedies, together in a shared love.
I hope my novels are, first and foremost, entertaining to read. But I also hope they give life to the women history is inclined to forget and show them in their bright, living, loving, rainbow colours.
Rebecca recommends:
I read so much that it’s difficult to choose just one or two recommendations. For an American take on love between women in the 1920s, look up Colette Moody’s – www.colettemoody.com – The Seduction of Moxie.
My biggest inspiration in writing historical love stories between women has always been Sarah Waters – www.sarahwaters.com – and I recommend Tipping the Velvet for an exquisite Victorian setting or The Night Watch for a fascinating structure and a compelling story set during the Second World War.
Questions for the Author:
Tell us about a moment when you felt a deep connection to history.
I always feel a deep connection to history. Simply walking through the city centre of Nottingham, where I live and
Rebecca as a Suffragette
work, I can feel moved just looking at the historic buildings and imagining the people who passed this way before me. In my former role as a Costumed Interpreter in The Galleries of Justice Museum (the former courtrooms and prison of Nottinghamshire, mostly Georgian and Victorian) I used to dress in historical costume and sit waiting for visitors surrounded by the same walls and bars as the women I was portraying. At quiet times I could feel very connected to that history – which is what inspired my first novel, Truths, where the protagonist in the contemporary part of the story is a Costumed Interpreter in a similar museum.
Do you have a specific place or sound that makes you feel connected to history? Why?
The Galleries of Justice Museum is the most obvious choice – the history is palpable there. However, so I don’t repeat the answer I gave to the first question, I should say that I feel a very deep connection to history whenever I visit London. So much British history focuses on stories that played out in London, it’s impossible not to feel a connection to that. I make reference to this in Fragile Wings when my characters find themselves on Savile Row and it resonates with one of them. It’s why I wanted to set a novel in
Rebecca as a Gaoler’s wife
historical London.
What is your (or a) favorite historical era or event?
I love all of history. I am fascinated, for some reason, by the Battle of Waterloo, as a vast human tragedy and also a turning point in European history. But it was so horrible that I couldn’t say it is my favourite. I adore the Regency – the time of Empire line dresses and Jane Austen but also Byron and Shelley and the worst working class unrest the country had seen. The Victorian era fascinates me because it is so close to us, only a generation or two removed, and yet so alien. And I also adore the 1920s for the style, the glamour, the sheer focus on living life to its full. In the midst of all of that, my favourite of the great historical figures is probably Queen Elizabeth I!
Is there a moment in your research when some specific historical moment or event came to life for you? Tell us about it.
In researching the clothes my characters would wear in Fragile Wings I looked at real fashion magazines and photographs of real dresses from the 1920s. My characters all wear real clothes that I’ve seen pictures of in real publications. It might seem superficial, but clothes are very important and, in the 1920s, the clothes that women wore were very much a rebellion, a break with the past. Recently I was able to see some of the clothing on display at the Museum of London and to see some dresses from the 1920s. It felt, to me, as though my characters had just stepped out of them.
And for fun ~ Tell us about your Favorite Historical Crush. ;o) (This can be either a historical or fictional crush.) Why?
Since I’m bi, I think I should be allowed two… Both fictional… I am head over heels in love with Victorian male impersonator Kitty Butler in Sarah Water’s Tipping the Velvet (made even better that she was played by Keeley Hawes in the BBC adaptation). And I’ve been crushing on Richard Sharpe from Bernard Cornwall’s Napoleonic novels (and played by Sean Bean for TV) for most of my adult life.
If you want real people…well, I’ve always been fascinated by Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb and can’t decide which one of them is most compelling!
Rebecca is generously giving away one signed copy of Fragile Wings and one signed copy of The Locket and the Flintlock, one book each to two winners (open to all readers). To enter the giveaway, leave a comment below or on the Facebook post you’ll find here (or both – Share the Love!) ;o) by 11:59 pm PST March 24, 2016. Good luck!
Born in Nottingham, England, Rebecca graduated with a degree in English Studies in 2004. Since then, her life has taken a few twists and turns, including a spell working as a private tutor in eastern Slovenia, but now she is back in her homeland again. She is the Community Participation Officer at Nottingham’s Galleries of Justice Museum and Volunteer Coordinator at Ilkeston’s Erewash Museum. She is also a freelance scriptwriter and costumed interpreter and an elected local councillor.
Rebecca’s first novel, Truths, was published by Bold Strokes Books in 2010. Her 2011 release, Ghosts of Winter was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. Her third novel, The Locket and the Flintlock was released in 2012 and her fourth novel, Fragile Wings, was a new release in January 2016. She also contributed short stories to several anthologies, including Girls Who Bite: Lesbian Vampire Erotica (Cleis Press), Women of the Dark Streets (Bold Strokes Books) and Best Lesbian Romance 2012 (Cleis Press). Bold Strokes Books have also published a collection of Rebecca’s short stories set in historical prison settings under the title A Queer Kind of Justice: Prison Tales Across Time as an ebook only release.
Rebecca lives just outside of Nottingham with her partner, on the street where D. H. Lawrence grew up. You can follow her on Twitter: @rsbuck
Buy Rebecca’s books:
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The post HerStory: Rebecca S. Buck – Telling Their HerStories appeared first on Read-A-Romance Month.