Fantasy Novels Set In The Past

Are there any Fantasy Novels Set In The Past? Is this a trick question? Of course there are.

There are millions of fantasy stories set in pseudo-medieval or -dark-ages environments, but those aren't actually our world, so it's not really the past. Fantasy set in the actual historical past is much less common. SF set in the past is rarer still. There are certainly novels set in the past, but these are usually essentially mimetic; they may be imaginative (or inaccurate, depending on how you look at it), but they are generally not fantastic.

One pattern that does come up is of a (future) historian travelling back in time to do research, but usually ending up involved in events. One example is 'Fire Watch?' by Connie Willis?, in which a historian travels to 1940s London, and ends up being part of a fire-watch team during the Blitz. Another example is 'The Doomsday Book?' also by Connie Willis?, in which an Oxford student travels back to the time of the plague (although we are not sure which plague! Black Death??). There's a case to be made that these novels aren't really fantasy; the only suspension of disbelief required is at the start, for the time travel. The meat of the stories doesn't have a pervasive fantastic character. Is that right?

There is, of course, Alternate History. Often, these stories are set in the chronological past, but not that of our world, so it's not clear that they are really 'set in the past'. If we admit them, obvious examples are 'Father Land?', by Thomas Harris, 'SSGB?', by Len Deighton?, and 'The Man In The High Castle?', by Philip K Dick. Of these, the first two are 'straight' Alternate History, whereas the last is, as you'd expect, crazed Dickian SF.

'Crypto Nomicon?', by Neal Stephenson, is SF, and has sections set in the past. However, the stuff in the past is essentially background: it's neither Alternate History nor SF per se.

Niall Harrison has suggested 'ASH', by Mary Gentle, as a fantasy novel set in the past, but was not sure whether this was really so.

However, one good example would be The Drawing Of The Dark? by Tim Powers?. It posits that behind certain historical realities was a magical underpinning and a mystical war between East and West that paralleled historical invasions. Without being an expert on the history of the period, I could not say if it truly was historically accurate, but it certainly gave the impression that it was not Alternate History.

Isn't Steam Punk a whole subgenre of this? Isn't that SF set in the past?

Doesn't the meanings attatched to the terms 'fantasy' and 'the past' laid down above mean that there are no Fantasy Novels Set In The Past by definition? To be in the past, it has to be in our world; but to be fantasy, it can't be in our world. Not so. If the Dark Is Rising Sequence was set in the 15th century, they would be Fantasy Novels Set In The Past.