Oi, now I feel like an idiot.

[kaigou]

I just read a romance review (mostly b/c I was already on the site for an SFF book review and started clicking random links), and spent a good ten minutes after the review thinking I had to be missing something. A puritan, and the Witchfinders, and the book's set during the Civil War. Oh, yeah, SURE the author did his/her homework, puritans weren't anywhere around by the Civil War! Obviously someone's been sniffing the historical glue. *nods firmly*

And then I realized: the setting is the English Civil War.

Oh. Right. In which case, puritans? Yeah. There would be puritans.

*heddesk*

Comments

[kaigou]

If you're going to take someone to task for incorrect facts, it helps to make sure you do not, yourself, have incorrect facts. Or is this instead where I snark that those who can't write, critique? ...except that would be tarring myself with my own damn brush, I suppose.

[sharibet.livejournal.com]

Or is this instead where I snark that those who can't write, critique? ...except that would be tarring myself with my own damn brush, I suppose.

Oh, I don't know about that. I've read both your critiques and your fiction, and they're both very good.

I think people expect to see the stuff that they're culturally conditioned to see. An American sees a reference to the Civil War, and of course it's the American Civil War that springs to mind, and rightfully so. The English Civil War is only peripherally part of American history, and only because it was one of the events leading up to the Puritan exodus from England and the establishment of their colonies in the New World.

The World Wars are a bit trickier. The US fought in the First World War, though only in the last stages, but it somehow doesn't register on the public consciousness the same way that the Second World War does.