On June 1st, 1991, Outlander was first published, and was the first in a series of eight novels written by Diana Gabaldon. The series is a mixture of several genres, with elements of historical fiction, romance, adventure, and fantasy. With over twenty-five million copies sold, Outlander is one of the best-selling literary octologies of all time.
For those of you who are unaware, the first Outlander follows Claire Randall, former British Army nurse, and her husband Frank Randall, history professor, as they go on their second honeymoon to Inverness, Scotland, in 1946. As Frank conducts research on his family history, Claire goes plant-gathering near some standing stones on the hill of Craigh na Dun, and hears a strange buzzing noise emanating from one of the stones. As she touches the stone to investigate, she faints, and awakes in the year 1743. She is then taken in by the highlanders of Clan Mackenzie, where she meets Jamie Fraser, and throughout the series they live through the most significant historical events of the 18th century, from the Jacobite Rising to the American Revolution.
Diana Gabaldon had planned to write a historical novel “for practice” but did not have a specific setting in mind until she watched The War Games, the final serial of the sixth season of Doctor Who. Her eye was drawn to the character Jamie McCrimmon, who was an 18th-century Scottish piper from the Clan McLaren and companion of the Second Doctor, and was also the direct inspiration for Jamie Fraser.
After this, Diana initially planned to write a straight historical fiction novel, but as she began to write the character of Claire, she says on the FAQ page on her website that Claire “promptly took over the story and began telling it herself, making smart-ass modern remarks about everything.” That was when she decided to make Claire a modern woman and determined how she came to be in 18th-century Scotland later.
Surprisingly, according to her FAQ, Diana did not research before she began to write Outlander. Since she never knows what’s going to happen when she writes, she would have no idea where to begin her research, let alone where to stop, which is why she instead conducted her research as she wrote.
[The two] feed off each other in a useful way: while looking up some bit of information I need for a scene, I almost invariably also find some fascinating thing that stimulates a completely different scene – which in turn will require some further information, that in turn yields further novelties, and so on.
On August 9th, 2014, a TV adaptation of the series premiered on Starz, with it’s fifth season having just concluded earlier last month. While time travel hasn’t been an original concept since the time of H.G Wells, the Outlander series takes a new perspective on this tired genre by primarily focusing on people in history that aren’t typically explored in time travel stories. The Outlander series is a must read, and with a collective total of almost seven thousand pages, you’ll have enough reading material to last you until next June.