Historical fiction, as the name suggests, is a literary genre in which the story or novel is set in the past (at least fifty years ago as a rule of thumb). Such novels aim to capture the details of the period as accurately as possible (such as its manners, customs and speech) and sometimes include historical figures as protagonists and/or represent historical events. A sub-genre of this type of fiction, called alternate history or speculative history, may subvert historical facts to explore what might have occurred had certain historical events been different.
The setting is one of the most important elements of this type of fiction and includes an authentic rendering of a particular historical period (such as Elizabethan England, for example). The dialogue and manners of speech must also accurately reflect, as far as possible, the language used in the historical period and the social conditions of the protagonists.