Historical Web Novels

Historical web novels with public chapters on NovelCult.

War and Peace

Against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, five aristocratic families in Russia are transformed by the vagaries of life, by war, and by the intersection of their lives with each other. Hundreds of characters populate War and Peace, many of them historical persons, including Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I, and all of them come to life under Tolstoy’s deft hand. War and Peace is generally considered to be Tolstoy’s masterpiece, a pinnacle of Russian literature, and one of history’s great novels.

Leo Tolstoy · Historical · 365 ch

A Tale of Two Cities

A doctor is released from the Bastille after being falsely imprisoned for almost eighteen years. A young woman discovers the father she’s never known is not dead but alive, if not entirely well. A young man is acquitted of being a traitor, due in part to the efforts of a rather selfish lout who is assisting the young man’s attorney.

Charles Dickens · Historical · 46 ch

Les Misérables

Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo has been described as one of literature’s greatest novels. The first two volumes were published in French in March 1862 and translated into English later the same year. Since then it has been translated by numerous others and has been adapted for film, television, radio, animation and the stage.

Victor Hugo · Historical · 371 ch

The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers is the first of three adventure novels written by Alexandre Dumas featuring the character of d’Artagnan. The young d’Artagnan leaves home in Gascony for Paris to join the King’s Musketeers. On his way to Paris, the letter which will introduce him to the commander of the Musketeers is stolen by a mysterious man in the town of Meung.

Alexandre Dumas · Adventure · 69 ch

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850; it was one of the first books to be mass-produced in America, which helped ensure its immediate popularity and ubiquitous presence on contemporary shelves. Its first printing of 2,500 books sold out in ten days. The novel is set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony between the years 1642 and 1649.

Nathaniel Hawthorne · Historical · 26 ch

Notre-Dame de Paris

Esmeralda is a breathtaking beauty and attracts the attention of men all around her, including an actor, a captain, and an archdeacon, to whom she is of course forbidden. But because of a kindness she paid to him, there is one whose love for her is pure: the archdeacon’s bellringer. The actions of the archdeacon, who cannot control his lust for the young woman, ultimately draws all four men into her orbit, and his, with tragic consequences.

Victor Hugo · Historical · 61 ch

The Last of the Mohicans

The Last of the Mohicans is one of the most famous tales of pioneer American adventure. Set during the French and Indian War, Mohicans tells the tale of the journey of two daughters to meet their father, a colonel, at Fort William Henry. The road is long and dangerous, and they, along with their American and Native guides, encounter adventure at each step.

James Fenimore Cooper · Adventure · 34 ch

Ivanhoe

Set in 12th-century England, Prince John rules while his brother King Richard is away during the Crusades. During his reign, Prince John and others of Norman nobility abuse their power over the Saxons, forcing Saxons off their lands and many Saxon nobles into serfdom. Ivanhoe, a man disowned by his own Saxon father for going to war alongside the Norman King Richard, returns from the Crusades in disguise and appears in a tournament at Ashby.

Walter Scott · Historical · 46 ch

The Scarlet Pimpernel

At the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, a mysterious daredevil rescues French aristocrats from execution and smuggles them out of France. This secretive escape artist is known to the French authorities only by the drawings of a flower, the scarlet pimpernel, that he leaves as his calling card. Marguerite St. Just has avoided the worst of the revolutionary turmoil.

Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 31 ch

Kidnapped

Written in 1886, Kidnapped is an adventure novel set in Scotland in the mid-1700s, not long after the Jacobite rebellion in the Highlands which had attempted to set Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. This rebellion was put down brutally and afterwards the Government imposed strict controls on Highlanders, outlawing many clan leaders. The protagonist of Stevenson’s novel is young David Balfour, who is in his late teens.

Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 33 ch

Ben Hur

Judah and Massala are close friends growing up, though one is Jewish and the other Roman. But when an accident happens after Massala returns from five years in Rome, Massala betrays his childhood friend and family. Judah’s mother and sister are taken away to prison, and he is sent to a galley-ship.

Lew Wallace · Historical · 89 ch

Quo Vadis

In Nero’s Rome, a young Roman officer falls in love with a Christian hostage while the early Church faces persecution. Their story unfolds against the intrigues of the imperial court and the burning of the city.

Henryk Sienkiewicz · Historical · 75 ch

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is one of Mark Twain’s most enduring novels. During a stay at a modern-day English castle, the narrator meets a mysterious stranger. The stranger, Hank Morgan, is an engineer from Connecticut, and proceeds to weave a satirical, biting, and hilarious tale of how he traveled back in time to find himself in the court of the legendary King Arthur.

Mark Twain · Comedy · 47 ch

Hypatia

Philammon is a young monk living in an isolated Egyptian monastery circa 400 AD. He feels a longing to see the world, so he embarks on a trip to Alexandria, a city teeming with culture and learning. On his way he meets Pelagia, a beautiful courtesan traveling up the Nile with a band of Goths in search of Asgard.

Charles Kingsley · Historical · 32 ch

The Prince and the Pauper

The Prince and the Pauper remains one of Twain’s more popular novels, having been adapted many times for the stage, screen, and elsewhere. When Tom Canty, a young pauper in London, meets Prince Edward, the two switch clothes and assume the other’s identity. Tom then learns the life of royalty, while the true prince discovers the troubles of commoners.

Mark Twain · Historical · 36 ch

Romola

In the late 15th century, a shipwrecked Greek named Tito Melema arrives in a Florence unsettled by the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici. He swiftly wins friends and favor with his quick wits, lightly worn learning, and good looks. He comes to the attention of the blind old scholar, Bardo de’ Bardi, and becomes his assistant.

George Eliot · Historical · 74 ch

The White Company

It is the Middle Ages, and the Hundred Years War rages on in England and France. Alleyne Edricson, the son of an English landowner, is training as a novice at an abbey. As his training draws to a close, he’s called upon to spend a year in the outside world to decide if he really wants to devote his life to prayer and contemplation.

Arthur Conan Doyle · Historical · 38 ch

Captain Blood

Peter Blood, with experience as a soldier and sailor, is practicing medicine in Bridgewater, England, when he inadvertently gets caught up in a rebellion being waged by the Duke of Monmouth. After being convicted of treason, Blood and some of the rebels are sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean. The year is 1688.

Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 31 ch

Waverley

Edward Waverley is a young English gentleman, the heir to his uncle, Sir Everard Waverley. After receiving a commission in the English army and being stationed in Scotland, he comes into contact with Jacobites, supporters of the pretender Charles Stuart, who seeks to reclaim the throne of England. After becoming enamored with the Jacobite cause and subsequently being suspected of treason, Waverley decides to openly join the uprising on the side of the rebels, during which his honorable conduct wins him favor on both sides of the conflict.

Walter Scott · Adventure · 77 ch

Barnaby Rudge

Barnaby Rudge opens in the English village of Chigwell in 1775, where an unsolved double murder casts a long shadow over the local community, and in particular Barnaby Rudge, the son of one of the victims. Five years later, London is consumed by the Gordon Riots of 1780, when Lord George Gordon led the Protestant Association in a protest against increased rights for Catholics that descended into days of mob violence. Into this maelstrom wanders Barnaby, a guileless young man with an intellectual disability, recognized across the countryside by his eccentric dress and by Grip, the raven riding on his shoulder.

Charles Dickens · Historical · 83 ch