The novel creates a world, which for all practical purposes is complete by itself. It is a world inhabited by people and it constructs itself on ideas and knowledge. Life is seen in the context of history in a novel. The historical novel is an imaginative portrayal of history, that is, of past states of affairs which affect human experience. Like the historian, the
historical novelist is a recoverer of what actually happened. R.G. Collingwood, who was keenly aware of the semblance between the historian and the novelist observes: