How do you suggest I write in an archaic style?

Question

I'd been exploring different styles of language when I decided I'd like to write in an archaic style as was common in the 18/19th century. How do you suggest I write in such style? Please do suggest anything you feel would be of particular benefit for my writing.

Answer 1

One of the most common features of 18th/19th centuries writing was long, flowery sentences. With some authors, especially in the 19th century, it only took 1-3 sentences to fill half a page of a book! Many writers also used a lot of natural imagery and references to famous historical/literary figures to communicate an emotion or sense of importance to the reader. Personification was another popular tool, especially when describing nature.

Here are some great examples from Thomas Hardy's novel Return of the Native (1878):

The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky ... The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.