General References
(those marked with stars are particularly good)

Dictionary of National Biography
Oxford English Dictionary
Victoria History of the Counties of England
Beer, Barrett L., Tudor England Observed: The World of John Stow (1998)
Brimacombe, Peter, Life in Tudor England {2002)
Burton, Elizabeth, The Pageant of Early Tudor England (1976)
Burton, Elizabeth, The Pageant of Elizabethan England (1958)
Byrne, M. St. Clare, Elizabethan Life in Town and Country (1925/1961)
Byrne, M. St. Clare, The Lisle Letters (1981) 6 vols.
Clark, Peter, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830 (1983)
Clark, Peter, and Paul Slack, eds., Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700 (1972)
Clark, Peter, and Paul Slack, English Towns in Transition 1500-1700 (1976)
Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (1997)
Cressy, David, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (1989)
Cressy, David, Literacy and Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (1980)
Davis, Michael Justin, The England of William Shakespeare (1987)
Dyer, A.D., The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (1973)
Eagleston, A.J., The Channel Islands under Tudor Government, 1485-1642 (1949)
Editors of Time Life Books, What Life Was Like in the Realm of Elizabeth (1998)
Emerson, Kathy Lynn, Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth Century England (1984)
Emerson, Kathy Lynn, Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England (1996)
Emmison, F.G., Tudor Food and Pastimes: Life at Ingatestone Hall (1964)
Evans, J.T., Seventeenth Century Norwich (1979)
Ford, Boris, ed., 16th Century Britain (1992)
Friedman, Alice, House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (1989)
Harrison, William, The Description of England (1587/1994)
Heal, Felicity and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500-1700 (1994)
Hill, J.W.F., Tudor and Stuart Lincoln (1956)
Hodges, C. Walter, The Battlement Garden: Britain from the Wars of the Roses to the Age of Shakespeare (1979)
Hodgett, Gerald A.J., Tudor Lincolnshire (1975)
Hole, Christina, English Sports and Pastimes (1949)
Houlbrooke, Ralph, The English Family 1450-1700 (1984)
Hurstfield, Joel, The Queen's Wards: Wardship and Marriage under Elizabeth I (1958)
Hurstfield, Joel, ed., Tudor Times (1964)
Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex, and Marriage in England 1570-1640 (1987)
Jack, Sybil M., Towns in Tudor and Stuart Britain (1996)
Jardine, Lisa, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (1996)
Jones, Jeanne, Family Life in Shakespeare's England: Stratford-upon-Avon 1570-1630 (1996)
Jones, Norman, The Birth of Elizabethan England: England in the 1560s (1993)
Kinney, Arthur F. and David W. Swain, eds., Tudor England: An Encyclopedia (2001)
Kocher, Paul H., Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (1953)
Lachman, Richard, From Manor to Market: Structural Change in England 1536-1640 (1987)
Loades, David, The Tudor Court (1987)
Lockyer, Roger, Tudor and Stuart Britain
Lofts, Norah, Domestic Life in England (1976)
Loomis, Albert J., The Spanish Elizabethans (1963)
Loxton, Howard, Shakespeare Country (1995)
MacCaffrey, Wallace T., Exeter 1540-1640 (1958)
MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County 1500-1600 (1986)
Mayhew, Graham, Tudor Rye (1987)
Mertes, Kate, The English Noble Household 1250-1600 (1988)
Meyer, Arnold Oskar, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (1967)
Morris, T. A., Europe and England in the Sixteenth Century (1998)
Nichols, John Gough, ed., The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen of London, 1550-1563 (1848/1968)
Orlin, Lena Cowen, Elizabethan Households (1995)
Orton, Harold, Stewart Sanderson and John Widdowson, eds., The Linguistic Atlas of England(1978)
Ozment, Steven, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Renaissance Europe (1983)
Palliser, D.M., The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Tudors 1547-1603 (1983)
Patten, John, English Towns 1500-1700 (1978)
Pearson, Lu Emily, Elizabethans at Home (1957)
Platt, Colin, The English Medieval Town (1976)
Platt, Colin, Medieval England: A Social History and Archaeology from the Conquest to 1600 A.D. (1978)
Prior, Mary, ed., Women in English Society 1500-1800 (1985)
Pritchard, R. E., ed., Shakespeare's England: Life in Elizabethan and Jacobean Times (1999)
Reay, Barry, ed., Popular Culture in Seventeenth Century England (1985)
Reed, Michael, The Age of Exuberance 1550-1700 (1986)
Rowse, A.L., The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Cultural Achievement (1972)
Rowse, A.L., The Elizabethan Renaissance: The Life of the Society (1971)
Rowse, A.L., The England of Elizabeth: The Structure of Society (1950)
Rowse, A.L., The English Past (1952)
Rowse, A.L., The Expansion of Elizabethan England (1955)
Rowse, A.L., Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer (1974)
Rowse, A.L., and John Hedgecoe, In Shakespeare's Land (1987)
Russell, Conrad, Crisis of Parliament: English History 1509-1660 (1971)
Rye, William Benchley, England as Seen by Foreigners in the days of Elizabeth and James the First (1865)
Scarisbrick, J.J., The Reformation and the English People (1984)
Schmidt, Albert J., The Yeoman in Tudor and Stuart England (1961)
Shakespeare's England, Vol. I-II (1917):
      Ronald Bayne, "Religion"
      E.K. Chambers, "The Court"
      Lionel Cust, "Paining, Sculpture and Engraving"
      Viscount Dillon, "The Army: Military Service and Equipment: Armour and Weapons"
      J.W. Fortesque, "The Army: Military Service and Equipment:The Soldier"
      Charles Hughes, "Land Travel"
      J.G. Carr Laughton, "The Navy: Ships and Sailors"
      Sir Sidney Lee, "Bearbaiting, Bullbaiting, and Cockfighting"
      Parcy Marquoid, "Costume,"
      Percy Marquoid, "The Home"
      Percy Marquoid, "Meals: Food and Drink: Cooking"
      C.T. Onions, "A Select Glossary of Musical Terms"
      R.E. Prothero, "Agriculture and Gardening"
      John Edwin Sandys, "Education"
      John Edwin Sandys, "Scholarship"
      A. Forbes Sieveking, "Dancing"
      A. Forbes Sieveking, "Fencing and Duelling"
      A. Forbes Sieveking, "Games"
      A. Forbes Sieveking, "Horsemanship"
      Edward Maunde Thompson, "Handwriting"
      Arthur Underhill, "Law"
      George Unwin, "Commerce and Coinage"
Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 17: Shakespeare in his Own Age (1965)
Sharpe, J.A., Early Modern England: A Social History 1550-1760 (1987)
Shumaker, Wayne, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (1972)
Sim, Alison, Food and Feast in Tudor England (1997)
Sim, Alison, Pleasures and Pastimes in Tuodr England [1999]
Sim, Alison, The Tudor Housewife (1996)
Simpson, Alan, The Wealth of the Gentry 1540-1660 (1961)
Singman, Jeffrey L., Daily Life in Elizabethan England (1995)
Smith, A. Hassell, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558-1603 (1974)
Smith, Alan G.R., The Emergence of a Nation State: The Commonwealth of England 1529-1660 (1984)
Smith, Alan G.R., Science and Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1972)
Smith, Lacey Baldwin, The Horizan Book of the Elizabethan World (1967)
Smurthwaite, David, The Complete Guide to the Battlefields of Britain (1984)
Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1974)
Spufford, Margaret, The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their Wares in the Seventeenth Century (1984)
Starkey, David, et.al., The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (1987)
Stephens, W.B., Seventeenth Century Exeter (1958)
Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558-1641 (abridged, 1967)
Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1973)
Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (1977)
Stone, Lawrence, Road to Divorce, England 1530-1987 (1990)
Stone, Lawrence and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540-1880 (1984)
Strong, Roy, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (1973)
Strong, Roy, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (1977)
Strong, Roy, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (1969)
Strong, Roy, Lost Treasures of Britain (1990)
Strong, Roy, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, 2 vols. (1969)
Sugden, E.H., A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of William Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists (1969)
Swabey, ffiona, Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Gentry Household in the Later Middle Ages (1999)
Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (1991)
Thurley, Simon, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (1993)
Tillyard, E.M.W., The Elizabethan World Picture (1959)
Trevor-Roper, H.R., The Gentry (1953)
Trimble, W.R., The Catholic Laity in Elizabethan England (1964)
Trudgill, Peter, The Dialects of England (1990)
Upton, Clive and J.D. A. Widdowson, An Atlas of English Dialects (1996)
Vale, Marcia, The Gentleman's Recreations: Accomplishments and Pastimes of the English Gentleman, 1580- 1630 (1977)
Wernham, R.B., Before the Armada: The Emergence of the English Nation, 1485-1588 (1966)
Whitaker, W.B., Sunday in Tudor and Stuart Times (1933)
Williams, Penry, Life in Tudor England (1964) ~ contains a "classic" error–mistakes stew (food) for stews (brothels)
Wilson, John Dover, Life in Shakespeare's England (1911)
Winchester, Barbara, Tudor Family Portrait (1955)
Wolfram, Sybil, In-Laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (1987)
Woodbridge, Linda, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nation of Women, 1540-1620 (1983)
Woodfill, Walter L., Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (1969)
Woodward, D.M., The Trade of Elizabethan Chester (1970)
Wrightson, Keith, English Society 1580-1680 (1982)
Wrightson, Keigh, and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525-1700 (1979)
Yates, Frances A., The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (1979)
Youings, Joyce, Sixteenth Century England (1984)

Biographies of 16th century figures are too numerous to list here, but they are wonderful sources of general information about the period. A few are included in the novel-by-novel bibliography. The link to that page is at the bottom of this one.

Arnold, Janet, Patterns of Fashion: The cut and construction of clothes for men and women c. 1560-1620 [1985]
Arnold, Janet, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd (1988)
Ashelford, Jane, Care of Clothes (1997)
Ashelford, Jane, A Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century (1983)
Banner, Lois, "The Fashionable Sex, 1000-1600," History Today, 4/92
Cunnington, C. Willett, History of Underclothes (1951/1992)
Cunnington, C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century (1954)
Cunnington, Phillis, Costume for Births, Marriages and Deaths (1972)
Cunnington, Phillis, Costume of Household Servants from the Middle Ages to 1900 (1974)
Evans, Joan, A History of Jewellery 1100-1870 (1970)
Lester, Katherine Morris and Bess Viola Oerke, Accessories of Dress (1940/1954)
Lister, Margot, Costumes of Everyday Life: An Illustrated History of Working Clothes from 900-1910 (l972)
Norris, Herbert, Tudor Costume and Fashion (1938/1997)
Scarisbrick, Diana, Tudor and Jacobean Jewelry (1995)
Vecellis, Cesare, Renaissance Costume Book(1977)
Weiditz, Christoph, Authentic Everyday Dress in the Renaissance (1927/1994)
Wilcox, A. Turner, The Dictionary of Costume (1969)
Winter, Janet and Carolyn Savoy, Elizabethan Costuming for the Years 1550-1580 (1979/1987)
Yarwood, Doreen, The Encyclopedia of World Costume (1978)

Beier, A.L., Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640 (1985)
Bellamy, John, Strange, Inhuman Deaths: Murder in Tudor England (2005)
Bellamy, John G., Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England (1984)
Bossy, John, "Surprise, Surprise: An Elizabethan Mystery," History Today 9/91
Brooks, G.W., Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The Lower Branch of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (1986)
Cockburn, J.S., A History of English Assizes 1558-1714 (1972)
Cockburn, J.S., Crime in England 1550-1800 (1977)
Cressy, David, Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England: Tales of Discord and Dissention (2000)
Curtis, Timothy and J.A. Sharpe, "Crime in Tudor and Stuart England," History Today 2/88
Dolan, Frances E., Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550-1700 (1994)
D'Oyley, Elizabeth, "The Death of Amye Robsart," History Today 4/56
Gleason, J.H., The Justices of the Peace in England 1558-1640 (1969)
Hunnisett, R.F., The Medieval Coroner (1961)
Hunnisett, R.F., Sussex Coroners' Inquests 1558-1603 (1996)
Kelly, J. Thomas, Thorns on the Tudor Rose: Monks, Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars (1977)
Kent, Joan R., The English Village Constable 1580-1642, A Social and Administrative Study (1986)
Nicholl, Charles, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992)
Pugh, Ralph B., Imprisonment in Medieval England (1968)
Samaha, Joel, Law and Order in Historical Perspective: The Case of Elizabethan Essex (1974)
Saul, Nigel, "Murder and Justice, Medieval Style: The Pashley Case, 1327-8," History Today 8/84
Sharpe, J.A., Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750 (1984)
Smith, Lacey Baldwin, Treason in Tudor England: Politics and Paranoia (1986)
Weatherford, John W., Crime and Punishment in the Age of Shakespeare and Milton, 1570-1640 (2000)
Williams, Neville, Contraband Cargoes: Seven Centuries of Smuggling (1959)
Williams, Neville, Knaves and Fools (1959)
Williams, Neville, The Sea Dogs: Privateers, Plunder and Piracy in the Elizabethan Age (1975)

Airs, Malcolm, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A Building History (1995)
Edwards, Ralph, and L.G.G. Ramsey, eds., The Connoisseur's Complete Period Guide to the Houses, Decoration, Furnishing and Chattels of the Classic Periods (1956)
Errand, Jeremy, Secret Passages and Hiding Places[1974]
Eyler, Ellen C., Early English Gardens and Garden Books (1963)
Girouard, Mark, Life in the English Country House (1980)
Girouard, Mark, "The Great Good Places," National Geographic 9/85
Hardyment, Christina, Home Comfort: A History of Domestic Arrangements (1992)
Hodgetts, Michael, Secret Hiding Places[1989]
Hoskins, W. G., "The Great Rebuilding," History Today 2/55
Howard, Maurice, The Early Tudor Country House: Architecture and Politics 1490-1550 (1987)
Howard, Maurice, "Power and the Early-Tudor Courtier's House," History Today, 5/87
Jackson-Stops, Gervase, ed., The Treasure Houses of Britain: Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting (1985)
Piper, David, "The English Portrait," History Today, V
Ross, Stewart, History in Hiding: The Story of Britain's Secret Passages and Hiding Places [1991]
Schofield, John, Medieval London Houses (1994)
Sisson, C.J., The Boar's Head Theater (1972)
Smith, Irwin, Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse (1964)
Smith, Irwin, Shakespeare's Globe Playhouse (1956)
Squiers, Granville, Secret Hiding Places (1934/1971)
Starkey, David, "Greatest Oaks from Smallest Acorns Grow: The English Renaissance Miniature," History Today 9/83
West, Trudy, The Timber-frame House in England (1971)
Stopes, C.C., Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage (1913)
Willes, Margaret, Country House Estates (1996)
Willes, Margaret, Household Management (1996)
Williams, Neville, The Royal Residences of Great Britain (1960)
Wilson, Derek, The Tower of London (1978/1993)
Wilson, Jean, The Archaeology of Shakespeare (1995)
Winter, Carl, Elizabethan Miniatures (1943)
Wood, Margaret, The English Medieval House (1965)

Arber, Agnes Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution, A Chapter in the History of Botony 1470-1670 (rev. ed. 1938)
Copeman, W.S.C., Doctors and Disease in Tudor Times (1960)
Culpeper, Nicholas, Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1653/1995)
Eccles, Audrey, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England (1982)
Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (1973)
Evans, Joan, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1976)
Forbes, Thomas Rogers, Chronicle from Aldgate: Life and Death in Shakespeare's London (1971)
Freeman, Mararet B., Herbs for the Medieval Household (1943; 1971)
Gerard, John, Gerard's Herbal (edited by Marcus Woodward) (1636/1985)
Jones, Whitney R.D., William Turner: Tudor Naturalist, Physician and Divine (1988)
Kybett, Susan Maclean, "Henry VIII--A Malnourished King," History Today 9/89
Lee, William H. and Lynn Lee, Herbal Love Potions (1991)
Markham, Gervase, The English Housewife (ed. Michael R. Best)(1613/1998)
Matossian, Mary Kilbourne, Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics and History (1989)
McLaren, Angus, A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present Day (1990)
Morwyn, Green Magic: The Healing Power of Herbs, Talismans, & Stones (1994)
Pollack, Linda, With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman Lady Grace Mildmay 1552-1620 (1993)
Putnam, Claire, Flowers and Trees of Tudor England (1972)
Rawcliffe, Carole, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (1995)
Riddle, John M., Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (1992)
Sanecki, K.N., History of the English Herb Garden (1992)
Sanitatis, Tacuinum, The Medieval Health Handbook (1976)
Siraisi, Nancy, Medieval and Renaissance Medicine (1990)
Slack, Paul, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (1985)
Talbot, Rob, and Robin Whiteman, Brother Cadfael's Herb Garden (1997)
Thompson, C.J.S., Poisons and Poisoners (1931)
Webster, Charles, ed., Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (1979)
Wilson, F.P., The Plague in Shakespeare's London (1927)

Camusso, Lorenzo, Travel Guide to Europe 1492 (1990)
Cantor, Leonard, The Changing English Countryside 1400-1700 (1987)
Cantor, Leonard, ed., The English Medieval Landscape (1982)
Chandler, John, John Leland's Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England (1998)
Crofts, J., Packhorse, Waggon and Post: Land Carriage and Communications under the Tudors and Stuarts (1967)
Darby, H.C., ed., An Historical Geography of England Before 1800 (1963)
Dent, Anthony, Horses in Shakespeare's England (1987)
Harvey, P.D.A., Maps in Tudor England (1993)
Hoby, Sir Thomas, The Travels and Life of Sir Thomas Hoby, Kt. of Bisham Abbey, Written by Himself. 1547-1564 (1902)
James, J.B., "Sixteenth Century Travellers," History Today 3/67
LaMar, Virginia A., Travel and Roads in England (1960)
Lambarde, William, A Perambulation of Kent (1576/1970)
Newton, Arthur P., ed., Travel and Travelers in the Middle Ages (1949)
Ohler, Norbert, The Medieval Traveller (1986)
Parkes, Joan, Travel in England in the Seventeenth Century (1925)
Penrose, Boies, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance 1420-1620 (1952)
Penrose, Boies, Tudor and Early Stuart Voyaging (1962)
Piggott, Stuart, Wagon, Chariot and Carriages [1991]
Ravenhill, William, "Mapping a United Kingdom," History Today 10/85
Speed, John, The Counties of Britain, A Tudor Atlas (1995)
Taylor, Christopher, Roads and Tracks of Britain (1979)
Taylor, Eva G.R., An Atlas of Tudor England and Wales (1951)
Taylor, Eva G. R., Tudor Geography 1485-1583 (1930/1968)
Willan, T.S., River Navigation in England 1600-1750 (1936)
Williamson, J.A., The Ocean in English History (1941)
Rowling, Marjorie, Everyday Life of Medieval Travellers (1971)

Carlson, Eric, "Courtship in Tudor England," History Today 8/93
Green, V.H.H., "The Lisles and their Letters," History Today 3/82
Grey, Ian, "Ivan the Terrible and Elizabeth of England," History Today 9/62
Haynes, Alan, "The English Earthquake of 1580," History Today 8/79
Holmes, Richard, "Sixteenth Century Nixon Tapes," Harpers, 1/82
Mathew, David, "The Cornish and Welsh Pirates of the Reign of Elizabeth," English Historical Review, 1924
Rule, Margaret, "Henry VIII's Lost Warship," National Geographic 5/83
Shapiro, Susan C., "Feminists in Elizabethan England," History Today 11/77
Turner, Eunice, "Queen Elizabeth and her Friends," History Today 9/65
Walker, Greg, "Heretical Sects in Pre-Reformation England," History Today 5/93
Wilson, Jean, "Icons of Unity," History Today 6/93
Wright, Louis B., "The England that Shakespeare Knew," National Geographic, May 1964

© 2008 Kathy Lynn Emerson. All rights reserved.
Last updated 2/2/2008