Monday 8 October 2018

Using Digitised Magazines and Newspapers to Add Authenticity to Your Prose by Nola Passmore





You’re living in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1882.

You use your home telephone to ring someone in Ontario. Is that possible? 

You open the morning newspaper and see a photograph taken the previous evening. Could that happen?


These are just two of the hundreds of questions I’ve had to answer in writing my historical novel Scattered. I’ve found a lot of information through books and my friend Google, but they don’t always give me exactly what I need. If only I could access magazines and newspaper articles from the era.  Oh wait!  I can!  

Digital archives and libraries have been around since the early days of the internet and they’re expanding all the time. Billions of documents have now been scanned and made available for public use. You can find recipes, letters, diaries, church bulletins, shipping lists, birth records, financial statements and more. Perhaps the most interesting of all are the historical magazines, newspapers and academic journals. Not only can these documents answer your questions, but they provide a unique slice of life that can bring an extra dimension to your narrative. You can peruse the actual publications that your protagonists would have been reading in the time period of your book. What were they wearing? Where did they shop? What products did they have in their homes? What tonic did they use for stomach ailments? How much was a train ticket? Which bank did they use? What would they have eaten in a restaurant?

The Canadiana site (http://eco.canadiana.ca/) has been one of the most useful for my novel. I now know that fashionable men preferred checked patterns on their trousers, and that the Church of Holy Trinity was looking for a competent church organist. I can also access medical journals to see what treatments my fictional doctor would have used.

Although I’ve given examples that relate to my novel, these historical documents are just as relevant for biographies and other forms of creative nonfiction. You might be writing about your grandmother’s life as a trapeze artist with a travelling circus, but you’ll really bring her story to life if you understand more about the times and the places she visited.

Tips


  • You could start with some of the resources I’ve listed below. If you don’t find what you need in that list, try searching for archives and libraries in your desired location. It’s trickier if these are in a different language, though some sites also offer language options.

  • Some online archives are completely free and allow you to download and print full texts of the documents. Others require a subscription in order to access most things. Then there those that are partially free (e.g. you might be able to access some resources for free, but have to be a member for full access; or you might be able to see the entire document, but have to subscribe in order to save and print a copy). If you’re after a particular publication, check if it’s available elsewhere before subscribing. For example, you have to subscribe to the British Newspaper Archive (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/) in order to access their copies of the Illustrated London News. However, you can read some copies for free on sites such as the Hathi Trust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/).  It’s well worth subscribing to a site if you’ll be accessing it again and again. The $10 (CAN) I paid to use the Canadiana site for a month was a bargain, given the amount of  material I was able to find there. It’s also a lot cheaper than buying stacks of books or travelling long distances to access resources. 


  • Don’t just look for obvious publications, like metropolitan newspapers or women’s magazines. I found an eyewitness account of a Sable Island shipwreck in a newspaper called Canadian Methodist Magazine. I also found tons of helpful information about telecommunications, building projects, inventions and innovations, fashion and merchandise in a financial newspaper.


Don’t overlook seemingly inconsequential material such as advertisements and letters to the editor. In one Canadian magazine from 1882, I found ads for D. L. Moody’s new book on heaven and Mark Twain’s new book The Prince and the Pauper. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company was offering land in Manitoba for $2.50 an acre, Maltopepsyn was touted as a gastric wonder drug, and Carbolic Dog Soap could be used to wash your pig. Any of those little snippets could add extra realism to your tome. I also found a girl’s magazine from 1886 that responded to reader’s questions about all sorts of topics, ranging from affairs of the heart to raising silkworms to treating sunburn with sage leaves. Pure gold.



  • Remember that the purpose of your research is to answer questions relevant to your novel and to add colour and richness to your story. The aim is not to dump all of your fascinating information into the laps of readers. The iceberg principle applies. You’ll read a lot more than you use, but that reading will give you the background you’ll need to write convincing scenes and hopefully avoid the rewriting I’ve had to do.

  • Of course, it would be remiss of me not to issue a warning. These sites are highly addictive. You can start out looking for answers to your questions and end up spending the morning skimming through Women’s Weeklies from the year you were born.  “Oh look, here’s a pattern for making Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hat.” Set yourself a goal and try to stick to it (she says as she flicks through a 1942 Photoplay magazine).

 And to answer those questions from the beginning of this blog …


No, my protagonist can’t make a phone call from Halifax to Ontario in 1882. Although telephones were available in Canada from 1880, it took many more years to lay all of the telephone lines between different provinces.


No, a photograph taken one evening in 1882 was unlikely to appear in the newspaper the next morning because the processes needed to rapidly reproduce halftone photos was still being developed. However, it is feasible that a photo could feature in a magazine some time after the event due to the extra lead-up time.


I've included some web links below to get you started. What other resources have you found helpful in your work? I’d love to hear your suggestions.


Suggested Resources

Trove (https://trove.nla.gov.au/) – This is an Australian government initiative that has archives of newspapers, magazines, photos, diaries, music, videos and more. It’s free to access, and is being added to all the time.

Australian Women’s Weekly (https://archive.org/details/Australian_Womens_Weekly) – Contains full-text editions of almost every Women’s Weekly published between 1933 and 1968. Can be read online for free. An invaluable resource for Australian lifestyle during that era.

Hathi Trust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/) – An archive of millions of books and magazines. You can access a lot of it for free and view full-text editions of magazines and newspapers online. You can also download pdf versions of many of these to print, though there are some restrictions.

Archive.org (https://archive.org/) – An archive of billions of web pages, books, magazines, comic books and more.  Free to access.

Canadiana (http://eco.canadiana.ca/) – For all things Canada, though it also has material that would be more widely relevant. You can browse and look at the first few pages of documents for free. However, you have to subscribe to have full access and download materials. The low monthly fee is well worth it.

Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/) – A collection of more than 57 000 digitised books, available for free.

And of course, don’t forget your national and state libraries, which also have many resources available online:



Nola Passmore has had more than 150 short pieces published, including fiction, poetry, devotions, true stories, magazine articles, and academic papers. She and her husband Tim run a freelance writing and editing business called The Write Flourish.  You can find her occasional writing tips blog on their website.  She is currently editing and fact-checking her debut historical novel 'Scattered', which will be published by Breath of Fresh Air Press. Her next book will be called 'Things I will do differently the next time I'm crazy enough to write an historical novel.' 😉


Twitter:        https://twitter.com/NolaPassmore

19 comments:

  1. I always wanted to know the best soap to use to wash my pet pig ...

    Seriously, fantastic post. I love reading historical fiction where I can see the author has woven historical fact in with the fiction. It gives the fiction an air of authenticity and adds to my reading enjoyment. You've given us lots of great tips and resources in this post.

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    1. Thanks Iola. I'm sure your pig will thank you :) Can we expect an historical Kiwi romance from you in the future (or was that the past)?

      I agree re the historical fiction. I really love it when they weave interesting facts into the story, but it's tricky doing it seamlessly without the info dump. Kate Morton's brilliant with that. In 'The Forgotten Garden', she managed to work in some details about the brand new X-ray technology that fit perfectly with the plot, only you didn't realise how important it would be until later. On the other hand, you can really tell if someone hasn't done their homework. Just wish I'd found these resources years ago so I didn't have to rewrite so many scenes. Nothing major that wrecks the whole plot, but lots of little things. Thanks for your comment.

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  2. Great post Nola. Wow! What a lot of resources there are! Thanks so much for doing all the hard work in finding the links that would help us and for passing them on. Sounds like you are having lots of fun! :)

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    1. Thanks Anusha. I thought it would be good to compile a list of resources so I could find them myself :) And it is a lot of fun, though I have to keep reminding myself that I need to find the info and then get back to the novel. Very easy to take all those little sidetracks down memory lane just for the fun of it. Thanks for commenting :)

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  3. Thanks Nola. I love research and get carried away a lot and forget what I’m there for! The state archives are in Runcorn and there’s an open day coming up. I keep telling myself I must get over there. Also there is nothing like a trip to the location of your story as well but for now I must do it from the desk.

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    1. Raelene, I especially love going where I'm to write about.My husband not so much when I once dragged him around London's back streets. :)

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    2. Thanks Raelene. I must make a trip to the archives one day. Don't think I'll be able to make it to the open day this weekend, but let me know how it goes if you get there. I keep telling myself how much easier it would be if I'd set my novel in Australia, but Nova Scotia kept calling me. Nova Scotia has brilliant Archives, but not everything is available online. Would be so much better to walk into the actual building with my list of questions. But it's amazing what you can find online. So much easier for us than writers in past eras. Thanks for commenting.

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  4. Thanks for your very informative post, Nola. The research is as enjoyable as the writing isn't it? I've used facts from several old magazines I once picked up. And Mr. Google is always helpful. But I'll certainly add these links as ther's a myriad of things you need to know about past eras.

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    1. Thanks Rita. Yes the research is fun. I have to stop myself from browsing the magazines. So many gems there and lots of ideas for future stories. I've also picked up some actual old magazines from secondhand shops. So much fun to browse through and they tell you so much. I was in a secondhand shop yesterday that had a whole box of 1920s magazines in brilliant condition that had just been dropped off my a collector. They hadn't priced them yet, but I think they would have been out of my range. Nice to admire them from afar though. Thanks for commenting.

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  5. Wow, this is seriously awesome. I knew there were digital databases for these types of things, but I never would have thought they’d go back that far and I never would have checked.

    Thankfully, I don’t require the need to research historical facts, though even as a fantasy writer it wouldn’t hurt to know various social graces or complementary medical procedures for different time and technologically advanced periods. It could help to see what’s realistic and what we’d need to work around or devise to make it legitimate. :)

    Thanks

    K.A. Hart

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    1. Thanks Kirsten. I didn't realise some of them existed until recently. I wish I'd found them a lot earlier. Some of the medical info would definitely be relevant for you. Also lots on horses, home remedies and that sort of thing. Go to the Canadiana site and search for 'The Canadian Lancet', 'The Canadian Medical Review', 'Public Health Magazine' and 'The Dominion Medical Monthly and Ontario Medical Journal'. There are probably more. Some even have recipes in them for different concoctions. The ads in regular magazines are also good. Lots of remedies, tonics, ointments. Enjoy! And thanks for commenting.

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  6. Such a good and helpful post, Nola--thank you. I have certainly saved it for the months ahead when I can hopefully find time to get back to writing my next novel, which is historical fiction set in Queensland! I remember though when writing my very first novel 'Helena' in 2004 how I was able to discover online sites that could give me the ten most popular names for girls born in 1930 in Czechoslovakia (!) - or maps showing how much of Czechoslovakia the Germans invaded during WW2 and how that changed during the war years - or whether you could travel by train from a certain country town in Czechoslovakia to Prague during those years etc. All so valuable.

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    1. That's great that you were able to find all of that info, Jo. There's so much more out there now. I was able to find maps of Halifax and also the Nova Scotia train lines from round about 1880, which were a huge help. Some locations and names have changed, so it was good to see what it was like when my characters lived there.

      It should be easier for you to research Queensland rather than Czechoslovakia. Lots of material at the State Library and state archives, and you should be able to find lots of online magazines and papers. And of course you can actually travel to locations. I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with. Thanks for commenting.

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  7. Fascinating post, Nola. I’m glad I don’t write historicals because I’d likely never get any words written. The research could end up being more interesting than the actual story writing, lol. :)

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    1. Thanks Narelle. And yes, it's definitely a trap. Some of the articles I've come across in those old magazines are amazing. Very easy to go off on a tangent. I'm not sure I would have started an historical novel if I'd realised at the outset how much research would be involved. But it's rewarding when you see it all coming together. Thanks for commenting.

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  8. What a great tip Nola, and excellent links. This is something I feel I haven't tapped into a fraction enough. Must save this post for when I pick up work on my historical faction again. Thank you :)

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    1. Thanks Paula. I'd forgotten about that historical faction you were working on. Definitely worth looking at historic magazines. I have the beginnings of an idea for the next novel which will be set sometime in the 1890s. Next time I'll definitely read a bunch of those magazines before I start. It really helps to get your head in the time zone. I'll look forward to seeing what you come up with. Thanks for commenting.

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  9. Thank you for a fabulous resource, Nola. I don't have plans to write historic fiction in the near future. Then again, I didn't have plans to write a contemporary thriller until I started. Who knows what mysteries and opportunities lie ahead, for which I will need to unlock the mysteries of history. *Hears the strains of strange, alluring music from yesteryear ...

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    1. Thanks Mazzy. Don't you have a parallel narrative in the works, plus an historic short story? Lots of excuses to heed that strange, alluring music from yesteryear :) I just wish I'd found those old magazines sooner. Would have saved a lot of rewriting. Doing that today in fact. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

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