Linda Newbery on Writing Historical Fiction and on her Neo-Victorian Novel Set in Stone

Abstract

Linda Newbery, an acclaimed writer of historical fiction for children and (young) adults, won the 2006 Costa Children’s Book Award for her neo-Victorian novel Set in Stone (2006). In this interview, Linda Newbery answers questions regarding Set in Stone, as well as more general questions on writing historical fiction. She elaborates on topics such as intertextual relations and inspirations, research before writing a historical novel, narrative voice and her twenty-first century position as an author. She furthermore answers questions regarding Polly’s March (2004) and Until We Win (2017), which are both set at the beginning of the twentieth century shortly before the outbreak of WWI and focus on the suffragette movement.