Difference Between Biographical Fiction & Historical Fiction

Historical fiction and biographical fiction have some commonalities; indeed, you can regard much biographical fiction as a subgenre of historical fiction. In both, authors use compelling stories to cause history of a specific era to come alive for the reader; and both require solid research as a foundation.

Research

Based on research, authors of historical fiction strive to seamlessly integrate authentic artifacts, thought patterns, and political and social events of the historical setting into compelling fictional stories.

Subgenres

Apart from biographical historical fiction, historical fiction includes several subgenres such as Western, Regency and other historical romance, the Middle Ages and Biblical novels, as described at Findanauthor.com.

Past

A good common sense answer to the demarcation between historical and contemporary fiction comes from Historicalnovelsociety.org: Unless the author is young enough to need to rely entirely on research to evoke a more recent era, historical fiction deals with eras at least 50 years in the past.

Biographical

Biographical fiction uses as a foundation the imagined character of a real person, whereas other historical fiction may use entirely fictional characters although set in an authentic historical era. "A Midnight Carol," which is based on 19th-century author Charles Dickens, provides one example of biographical fiction.

Contemporary Biographical

Another distinction between historical and biographical fiction is that biographical fiction can use as a foundation the life of contemporary personalities as well as those of historical figures.

References

• Findmeanauthor.com: Brief Definition of the Historical Fiction Genre
• Historical Novel Society: Defining the Genre
• Elaine, Children’s Librarian; Lucius Beebe Memorial Library; Wakefield, Mass.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish