The proliferation of historical novels with more or less overt metafictional traits in the 1970s and 80s in Britain was a particularly arresting phenomenon at a time when historians were openly questioning the validity of the traditional concept of history understood as a scientific search for knowledge. This apparent contradiction is the starting point for the analysis of the relationship between history and literature carried out in the twelve essays collected in this book. The reader will find four preliminary essays on "The End of the Classical Period" establishing the characteristics of the appropriation of history in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical romances, the Irish ballad and Post-Independence Indian historical fiction, and a main, second section on "The Postmodernist Era" devoted to the analysis of works by Margaret Drabble, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, Caryl Churchill and David Bradley.