Last week I published the 2013 Favourite Historical Fiction Authors list which drew over 5000 people to the blog and resulted in more than 1000 Facebook shares. An awesome result!
This week I want to follow up as I did last year with the male perspective. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to discover that men have different favourites. Quite different, in fact. With a healthy does of military adventure and war, many set in medieval or Roman times.
Subtracting the men’s numbers from the overall tally gives us the women’s favourites. In both cases I’ve listed the top twenty – all authors tied for twentieth are included.
Completing the picture: 319 men offered at least one favourite author. A total of 301 different authors were chosen as favourites.
What do you think?
M.K. Tod writes historical fiction and blogs about all aspects of the genre at A Writer of History. Her debut novel, UNRAVELLED: Two wars. Two affairs. One marriage. is available in paperback from Amazon (US, Canada and elsewhere), and in e-book formats from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and on iTunes. Mary can also be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.
10 Responses
Love to see lists like thins. Just curious though. There is a Patrick O’Bryon (one of my personal favorites) who writes historical thrillers. Is that the same Patrick, or a different one?
Hi – and thanks for stopping by. Must be different authors. This one is definitely O’Brian and he wrote a series of novels set in Napoleonic times with a naval focus.
I don’t know him then, Thanks for sharing. I’ll have to bookmark this and look some up.
Interesting the names that show up in both top 10 lists. There are some authors here I haven’t read and will add to my list to check out. Thanks!
Right. It is a challenge to write for both sexes. Amazing when someone can please both without being mediocre. I look forward to reading these.
And very interesting-again, the overwhelming number of readers of historical fiction are women. Looking at the extended lists its also instructive to note the “crossover” authors and what and how they write. Ken Follett for instance. Hilary Mantel and Edward Rutherford. Perhaps some hints as to the nature of books that appeal to both men and women and broaden the historical fiction audience. Thanks again, Mary.
Started to read ‘Cross Stitch’ by Diana Gabaldon following your first female authors post then, before this post appeared, my first book by Bernard Cornwell ‘Kingdom’ about his distant relatives. Time will tell whether these live up to my high expectations for ‘old’ history set by previous memorable reading by Ken Follett in ‘Pillars of the Earth’ and Robert Harris with his Cicero series and ‘Pompeii’. Interesting that Bernard as Diana is so far in front of the others and each sex rate reading their own in the top places.