The club is delighted to announce a double success in the recent short lists published by the Historical Novel Society for their First Chapters Competition 2026. Victoria Haslam made it onto the Fantasy / Time-Slip / Alternate History short list for her novel ‘THE LIFE AND LOST TIMES OF ANNA MARIA GARTHWAITE’, while David N. Martin made the 20th Century Short List for ‘THE MODERN TYPE’.
Victoria’s novel follows the progress of a simple clergyman’s daughter as she defies expectation to become one of the most eminent designers of silk, in eighteenth century Spitalfields. ‘THE LIFE AND LOST TIMES OF ANNA MARIA GARTHWAITE’ is based on the life of the real Anna Maria Garthwaite, whose designs for silk are in the V&A Museum in London, along with some of the silks woven from them and stunning dresses they were made into.
Victoria Haslam lives in the countryside between Grantham and Melton Mowbray, only a couple of villages away from where Anna was born. This is her first novel, which she is currently in the final stages of editing, with a view to sending out on agent submission.
For David N. Martin, this is his second time on the Historical Novel Society’s short list for first chapters. His previous novel ‘The Typewriterists’ was also short listed. That novel was eventually published by Forged Truth Publishing, winning the 2025 Norman King Award for Fiction. His follow up ‘THE MODERN TYPE’ is a sequel to the story of the Havershall and Woodmansey family dynasty that began in ‘The Typewriterists’, described by its author as ‘Downton Abbey meets Peaky Blinders… with typewriters’.
The novel is a sweeping saga about succession and coming-of-age among the survivors of WWII. In the background of family events, women battle for their place in the workforce, bankrupt Britain dreams of a ‘Welfare State’ it can’t afford while its Empire collapses, immigration from the Commonwealth begins in earnest and the West faces Stalin’s advancing communist threat.
We wish both Victoria and David the best of luck for the subsequent rounds of the competition. The overall winner will be announced in August.
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