historical novelist

— […] the actual manners, customs, and peculiarities of some ages are illustrated and explained, and, though real personages are introduced, they are not clothed with fictions inconsistent or at variance with their real character. / In the class of those who have been most successful as historical novelists, we would rank the author of the ‘Lollards.’ It is true that his ‘Calthorpe’ was a work of mere fiction, but of fiction so nearly allied to nature, that we could confidently say, if the events did not happen, they might have happened.