How do I do my job of researching for a novel?

I’ve written over thirty historical novels, and I only write in three periods — the early Anglo-Norman years, the mid-eighteenth century, and the Regency. I set all my books in my native England. Therefore, when I start a book now I can build on a strong foundation of knowledge.

But if I were starting from scratch, this might be how I do it.

1. Read up on the basic history of the period and place and make my own chronology. Note events that I think would be important to my characters, which may not be what history considers important. For example, incidents leading up to the American Revolution were mostly considered minor at the time.

This is easy research. There are general histories and chronologies giving varying degrees of detail. Broad ones on my shelves are Timelines of History by Grun, (Simon and Schuster,) and The Chronology of British History by Palmer and Palmer (Century.) There are excellent ones on line.

2. Try to discover the time through the eyes of the people living then. For recent times, newspapers are an excellent resource, and there were also magazines for men and women. Newspapers in particular are often available on microfiche or microfilm in larger public libraries and university libraries. Most university libraries will let us consult their collections even if we cannot borrow materials. Local newspapers are generally only available in the area where they were published, but are probably the most interesting for daily details.

There may also be almanacs and similar annual publications. I own a number of volumes of the Annual Register, which gives details of the year’s events, including climate and Acts of Parliament.

Diaries and travel records are wonderful and there is a surprising range. In the early 1760s Horace Walpole was writing about the fashionable world; James Boswell was recording his arrival in London, including his meeting with Dr. Johnson; and John Macdonald, a footman, was storing up details for his memoirs.

3. I then make a day by day chronology for the precise period of my book. For this, I use a calendar like the one most of us have, the sort with a square for each day. There are programs and web sites that will do this. I find them accurate back to the 1760s, but I can’t guarantee it works back into the middle or dark ages.

On this I note those historical events from my chronology which might be particularly significant to my characters. After that, the calendar tracks new research and the events of my own story.

Now I have my foundation. I won’t directly use a hundredth of what I’ve learned from this, but it’s the solid platform on which to build an imaginary world. In addition, it avoids traps. How embarrassing to discover later that while my characters were enjoying a peaceful summer there were riots, or a hurricane, or a scandal that everyone, absolutely everyone, was talking about.

Clearly we can get around this by being vague about when and even where our story takes place, but I think that harms a book.