The French Revolution Within the greater setting of the French Revolution, which began in 1789, The Scarlet Pimpernel takes place beginning in September 1792, a month marked by what became known as the September Massacres, in which raging mobs murdered more than a thousand suspected criminals—many of whom were innocent—held at five different prisons. Orczy…
Tag: Historical Background
The Prince and the Pauper – Historical Background – Setting
The Monarchy of Henry VIII As a historical novel, The Prince and the Pauper is inspired by the general history of the time period in which the novel is set. (Like any historical novel, it does not claim to be wholly accurate factually. For example, historically Prince Edward was only nine when he became King…
The Power and the Glory – Historical Background – Setting
This novel takes place in Tabasco, a state in Mexico, during the 1930s. Tabasco was the state where the most extreme ideas of the Mexican Revolution were implemented, where intense poverty caused a backlash against the social order that had oppressed the peasantry for more than a century. In the early years of the twentieth…
The Namesake – Historical Context – Setting
Nikolai Gogol Russian author Nikolai Gogol was born in Velikie Sorochintsy, in what is now Ukraine, on March 20, 1809. His parents, Maria Ivanovna and Vasilii Afanas’evich Gogol-Ianovsky owned land; though the family was not rich, they were relatively well off. Gogol was the first infant in the family to survive, though Maria Ivanovna and…
Historical Context of The Adventures of Augie March
The Great Depression Much of the action of the novel takes place during the Great Depression, widely considered the most serious economic downturn in United States history. The Great Depression began in the autumn of 1929, when the largely unregulated stock market plunged and American industry came almost to a standstill. By the early 1930s,…