One can spend a long time researching a particular time and place. The following suggestions come from a variety of sources.
- Memoirs, literature written in your time period, old songs, sermons, out-of-print books, diaries and letters. These provide information on all elements: attitudes, language and idiom, household matters, material culture, everyday life, historical timelines, diversions, regulations, vehicles, travel, meals, manners and mannerisms, beliefs, morality and so on. Project Gutenberg and Fullbooks offer interesting selections of out-of-print books.
- Make sure to cover primary sources. They provide details for a historical backdrop including wars, revolutions, major events, prominent people, and the news of the day. Find primary sources in libraries, archives, and online.
- Secondary sources include non-fiction accounts, biographies, academic papers, interviews with historians and experts. These too add understanding to the world of the past.
- Historical Blogs - Such as Colonial Quills and Heroes, Heroines, and History
- Local sources, local historians and newspapers allow you to capture localities and neighbourhoods, to understand how much things cost, how long travel took, how international events affected local citizens, the things people worried and gossiped about, politics and scandals of the day.
- Old maps situate the streets and buildings of your setting and help ensure accuracy in your story. Remember, a street or building from long ago may no longer exist. What was once a footpath may now be a major roadway.
- Personal travel offers a feel for the landscape your characters inhabit. Such personal physical connection is compelling. If that’s not possible, guidebooks and tools like Google maps and Internet photo searches are virtual ways to travel.
- Paintings give perspectives on clothing, class differentiation, social preoccupations, physical geography, architecture and other matters.
- Financial accounts help you understand what things cost.
- Transcripts of old court cases provide interesting ideas to enhance your plot, while also providing insights into the legal system and laws of the time.
- Weather records enhance the accuracy of your story with details about floods, extremes of hot or cold, monster storms.
- Museums, Archives and Universities are incredible sources of information and there are museums for just about anything. Even if you cannot personally visit a museum, some offer online exhibits, research papers, and search capabilities.
- Military records and museums are a rich trove of details.
- Newsreels are more relevant to historical fiction set in the 20th century.
- Movies about historical figures and times are a wonderful way to see and hear history. Most are carefully researched and offer ideas on fashion, morality, diversions, travel, politics, war, and home life, as well as the sounds of chariots racing, cannons exploding, the guillotine dropping. Be sure to check their accuracy.
- If you are writing about more recent times, vintage magazines, postcards, cookbooks, and brochures can also be useful. (Adapted from M.K. Tod's blog on Historical Fiction research)
- Streaming video and audio content from CBC and Radio-Canada in both French and English.