Debate: Did historical fiction writers just make up the '19th century spelling' thing?

I was reading some old letters from 1852 at a library archive last week and noticed people spelled stuff pretty much the same as we do now. But every historical fiction book I pick up has characters saying 'tho' and 'thro' and dropping letters everywhere. Like in 'The Seamstress' they have a farmhand writing 'hav' insted of 'have' on purpose. But the real letters I saw were totally standard. Maybe authors think we need it to feel old timey? Is that helping readers or just dumbing it down? Anyone else run into actual 1800s writing and notice this gap?

3 comments

3 Comments

alex30726d ago

Oh man, that's a really good catch actually. But I gotta push back a little on one thing - you're right that most formal letters from the 1850s look pretty standard, but that's because the people writing them were usually educated and trying to follow proper grammar rules. The thing is, if you dig into diaries or notes written by working class folks, you actually do see some of that dropped letter stuff. I mean, my grandma had some old farm journals from the 1870s and there's 'hav' and 'giv' and 'doin' all over the place. It's not that authors are totally making it up, it's more like they're grabbing the most extreme examples and using them everywhere instead of saving it for the right characters. So it's a real thing, but probably way less common than fiction makes it seem. Maybe it's just me but I think the problem is they overdo it to signal "hey this is old timey" instead of letting the story speak for itself.

hayes.joel26d ago

That lines up with a bigger thing I notice too, @alex307 - it's like how people today overuse slang to sound relatable, authors back then just overdid the old timey shorthand to make sure nobody missed the historical vibe.

miles27925d ago

Nah, I think they wrote like that because people really did talk that way back then.