Are you interested in the best historical fiction authors of all time? There are plenty of amazing writers, and remarkable novels, from which to choose.
If you are looking for the best historical fiction books, there are plenty of options. Some books take place in London, while others unfold in New York or Paris. Whether drawing from the United States, England, Europe or the wider world, expect to find best sellers set in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. For a book-first take on the genre, check out our guide to the best historical fiction books.
Top 11 Historical Fiction Authors Of All Time
1. Ken Follett, 1949
Ken Follett is one of the greatest historical fiction writers of all time. He has sold more than 160 million copies of his works, and many of them regularly appear on lists of the best historical fiction ever written. Several of his books have reached the number one position on the New York Times Bestseller List, with many of them thrillers.
He was born in 1949 in Wales. He was not allowed to watch television as a child, so he started reading. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to London. He attended University College London, studying philosophy, and worked as a newspaper reporter before leaving journalism to write full time.
Some of his most popular works include Eye of the Needle, The Key to Rebecca, The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. For more, check out our guide to the best Ken Follett books.
2. Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022
Hilary Mantel was a British writer best known for great historical fiction. She grew up in Derbyshire and attended the University of Sheffield, graduating in 1973. She published her first novel, Every Day is Mother’s Day, in 1985, and its sequel a year later. In 1989 she achieved wider success with Fludd, a novel set in 1956 that focuses on the Roman Catholic Church.
Mantel is best known for the Wolf Hall trilogy, which follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell in the Tudor court of Henry VIII. She won the Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies. For more, check out our guide to the best British authors.
3. Geraldine Brooks, 1955
Geraldine Brooks is from Sydney, Australia. She has worked as a journalist and a novelist over the course of her career, focusing on historical fiction. Brooks attended the University of Sydney and worked as a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald before moving to the United States to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University.
Her journalism took her around the world, and those experiences became a source of inspiration for her writing. She published her first book, Nine Parts of Desire, in 1994. The book was based on her experiences reporting on the lives of Muslim women and became a bestseller translated into 17 languages. Her other significant works include Year of Wonders, March, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Foreign Correspondence.
4. Diana Gabaldon, 1952
Diana Gabaldon is an American writer known for the Outlander series of novels and for her ability to merge multiple genres, including historical fiction, romance and science fiction. She was born in Arizona and grew up in Flagstaff. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Northern Arizona University, a master’s degree in marine biology from the University of California, San Diego, and a PhD in behavioral ecology from Northern Arizona University.
She worked in environmental studies at Arizona State University, where she served as founding editor of a science software quarterly and wrote software reviews and technical articles for computer publications during the 1980s, before leaving to write full time.
She wrote her first novel as a type of writing practice, without any background in history, and was famously inspired to try the genre after watching Doctor Who.
Her marquee work is the Outlander series, which follows a 20th-century nurse who travels back in time to 18th-century Scotland and finds romance and adventure. The story later moves to North America, England, France and the West Indies.
5. Philippa Gregory, 1954
Philippa Gregory is a British novelist who has published a variety of best-selling historical fiction. She was born in Nairobi, Kenya, studied journalism in Cardiff and spent a year as a reporter with the Portsmouth News. She earned an English literature degree from the University of Sussex in 1982, worked for BBC Radio, and went on to earn a PhD in 18th-century literature from the University of Edinburgh.
Her works cover a variety of historical periods, particularly the Tudor era of the 16th century, with other novels set in the 17th and 18th centuries. Her most popular book, The Other Boleyn Girl, published in 2001, won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award, and The White Queen was adapted into a TV series.
The Other Boleyn Girl, which imagines the life of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary at the court of Henry VIII, remains one of the most popular historical novels of the past few decades.
6. Sarah Waters, 1966
Sarah Waters is a historical fiction author from Wales known for novels set in Victorian society, many of which focus on lesbian protagonists. She is originally from Pembrokeshire and earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature at the University of Kent, followed by a master’s degree and a PhD from the University of London.
The first book to put her on the map was Tipping the Velvet, published in 1998. It was adapted into a television series for BBC Two and has been translated into two dozen languages. Her other significant works include Affinity, Fingersmith and The Night Watch. She is a hugely influential historical fiction author, particularly among LGBTQ readers.
7. Colson Whitehead, 1969
Colson Whitehead is one of the most celebrated authors of American historical fiction. He was born in New York City and grew up in Manhattan, attended the Trinity School, and graduated from Harvard University in 1991. He received a MacArthur Fellowship, often called the genius grant, in 2002.
He published his first novel, The Intuitionist, in 1999. His most popular work is The Underground Railroad, published in 2016, which won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It reimagines the escape routes of enslaved people in the American South as a literal railroad.
In 2020, he won a second Pulitzer Prize for The Nickel Boys. He has also published works of nonfiction, and his novels have influenced a generation of younger historical fiction writers.
8. Bernard Cornwell, 1944
Bernard Cornwell is an English author who focuses on historical adventure fiction, much of it set during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.
His best-known novels follow the rifleman Richard Sharpe, and the series was adapted into a television series of the same name. His Saxon Stories served as the basis for the BBC television series The Last Kingdom. Today he lives in the United States with his wife, splitting his time between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina.
The Sharpe series follows Richard Sharpe through campaigns against Napoleon, including years of fighting on the Iberian Peninsula across multiple battles. For more, check out our guide to the best Bernard Cornwell books.
9. Alison Weir, 1951
Weir was born in London and developed a love of British history after reading a novel about Katherine of Aragon as a teenager. She worked as a history teacher and wrote on the side during the early part of her career. She has said the Tudor period is the “most dramatic period” of British history “with vivid, strong personalities”.
Today, Weir is best known for biographies and non-fiction like The Six Wives of Henry VIII and A Tudor Christmas. Her famous historical fiction works include The Captive Queen and Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen.
10. Georgette Heyer, 1902-1974
Georgette Heyer was born in London, the eldest of three children. She started writing as a teenager and published her first book, The Black Moth, in 1921. She wrote romance novels, thrillers and detective stories set primarily in the 1800s. She found success in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, although not on the same scale as her contemporary Agatha Christie. Her most famous fictional characters were Superintendent Hannasyde and Inspector Hemingway, and she is widely credited with creating the Regency romance genre. For more recommendations like Heyer, check out our guide to the best romance authors.
11. Sharon Kay Penman, 1945-2021
Penman was born in New York City and began writing historical fiction as a student. Her first novel was The Sunne in Splendour, about the life of Richard III. A thief stole a 400-page early draft from her car, a setback that put Penman off writing for five years. She worked in a law firm until she finally published the book in 1982. She is best known for the Welsh Princes trilogy and the Plantagenet series, all set in the Middle Ages. Penman earned multiple award nominations during her career, including an Edgar Award nomination for her medieval mystery The Queen’s Man. She died of pneumonia in 2021.
Final Word On The Best Historical Fiction Authors
Historical fiction is a wide-ranging genre. Plenty of the best historical fiction books focus on medieval times, while others center on the Cold War or World War II. The top writers of historical fiction have a unique ability to blend the facts of an era with entertaining fictional twists, and many of their works have been adapted into television series and movies.
If you are looking for fun, entertaining, thrilling books to read, pick up a few titles from the authors on this list. Many of them also wrote books set in other periods of history, so following one author is a great way to learn about several eras while being entertained by a talented storyteller. For a companion list built around individual novels rather than authors, see our round-up of top historical fiction authors and their signature books.
FAQs About the Best Historical Fiction Authors
Are historical books non-fiction?
There are lots of ways people write about history. Some writers produce non-fiction that focuses on getting the dates and facts precise, and in some cases those books read more like a textbook. In other cases, writers use historical settings as context for works of fiction. That is exactly where historical fiction comes into play.
Are historical fiction books historically accurate?
Some of the characters in historical fiction books might be fictional; however, the events that take place in the book are usually historically accurate. A historical novelist has to do a tremendous amount of research to make sure they get their facts correct.
Are historical fiction books a good way to learn about history?
Historical fiction books are a good way to learn the general facts of a time period; however, they usually do not possess the same level of granular detail as a history textbook.
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