8.4 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Series Narratives of Empire Pages 672 pp Followed by 1876 Publisher Random House | 4.2/5 Goodreads Language English Publication date 1984 Originally published 1984 Preceded by Burr Genre Historical drama | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Similar Gore Vidal books, Narratives of Empire books, Abraham Lincoln books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lincoln: A Novel is a historical novel, part of the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal.
Contents
Set during the American Civil War, the novel describes the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the eyes of several historical figures, including presidential secretary John Hay, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, his daughter Kate Chase, U.S. Representative Elihu B. Washburne, and conspirators John Wilkes Booth and David Herold.
The novel's emphasis is on the president's political and personal struggles, and not the battles of the Civil War. Though Lincoln is the focus, the book is never narrated from his point of view (with the exception of several paragraphs describing a dream Lincoln had shortly before his death). Vidal's portrait is drawn from contemporary diaries, memoirs, letters, newspaper accounts, and the biographical writings of Hay and John Nicolay, Lincoln's secretaries; and is buttressed by the work of both 19th- and 20th-century historians.
Adaptation
Lincoln, a made-for-TV film based on the novel, first aired in 1988. It stars Sam Waterston as Lincoln and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln.
Feud with historian Richard N. Current
"Dean of Lincoln scholars" Richard N. Current took great exception to his novel, starting a running feud with Vidal in the pages of The New York Review of Books.