15+ Historical Novels Free! [PDF]

History permeates much of literature, but there is a narrative subgenre that recreates it in a masterful way. 

We are proud to present our selection of historical novels in PDF format, a type of novel that has captivated the attention of millions of readers around the world and has great authors to its credit.

Historical novels began to boom in the 19th century within the framework of Romanticism. It was characterized by the exaltation of the nation and the most important historical events of the distant past. 

Although it has had ups and downs over the years, it has remained steady and at certain periods very successful with the public.

Nowadays, it can be defined as a fictional novel, set in the distant past, whose plot includes non-fictional characters and events that, in fact, can be placed in history. The founder of this novel was Walter Scott in the 18th century.

We invite you to thoroughly explore this collection of more than 15 historical novels in PDF format that will leave you enchanted with this literary subgenre. Download the ones you like on any of your electronic devices and enjoy the art totally free of charge.

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Featured Historical Novels

1) A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is a classic of 19th-century English literature. It deals in parallel with the realities of England and a revolutionary France.

Taking the French Revolution as a point of reference, Dickens depicts the social and political problems of England, fearing that history would repeat itself in his native country when he was writing this novel.

In the contrast between these two cities presented, England is presented as the confidence, the tranquility, the assured future, while France becomes more and more dangerous as the novel progresses.

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2) War and Peace

Author: Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace is a novel that Tolstoy began writing during a period of convalescence after breaking his arm by falling off a horse at a hunting party in 1864. 

It was first published as magazine installments (1865-1869). War and Peace is considered to be the author’s crowning work along with his other later work, “Anna Karenina”.

This is one of the crowning works of Russian literature and undoubtedly of world literature. In it, Tolstoy wanted to narrate the vicissitudes of numerous characters of all kinds and conditions throughout some fifty years of Russian history, from the Napoleonic wars to beyond the mid-nineteenth century.

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3) The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Author: Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hugo’s second novel, emphasizes the theme of ananke, the Greek word for fate or necessity. Ananke appears in the novel primarily as an inevitable transition; stylistically, the transition is from classicism to romanticism and, ultimately, from the human to the divine.

Notre Dame Cathedral is the embodiment of what must be recognized as the permanence of the transition. Originally a Gallo-Roman temple to the classical deity Jupiter, it became a Christian basilica and later, in the 12th century, a Romanesque cathedral. 

As its construction continued into the 13th century, the Gothic style overtook and succeeded the Romanesque configuration; and the cathedral, completed in 1345, stood as the architectural script of its own history. The novel is about this cathedral as a statement of ananke rather than about any of its many particular characters.

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Historical Novels

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Victor Hugo

Waverley

Walter Scott

Romola

George Eliot

Salammbo

Gustave Flaubert

Quo Vadis

Henryk Sienkiewicz

Germinal

Emile Zola

The valley of decision

Edith Wharton

Kidnapped

Robert Louis Stevenson

Ivanhoe

Walter Scott

Les Miserables

Victor Hugo

The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane

The Last of the Mohicans

James Fenimore Cooper

The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Willa Cather

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The White Company

Arthur Conan Doyle

Quentin Durward

Walter Scott

Here ends our selection of free Historical Novels in PDF format. We hope you liked it and already have your next book!

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