This list is of excellent research material on Shakespeare and early modern history. I’ve tried to refrain from any weighty academic texts, keeping the list to books a general reader would enjoy.
- Ackroyd, Peter, London: The Biography, Vintage (2001)
- Armstrong, Jane, The Arden Shakespeare Miscellany, Methuen Drama (2011)
- Bate, Jonathan, Soul of the Age – The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare, Penguin (2009)
- Cockayne, Emily, Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England, Yale (2007)
- Cook, Judith, Roaring Boys – Shakespeare’s Rat Pack, Sutton (2006)
- Crystal, David; Crystal, Ben, Eds., Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary & Language Companion, Penguin (2002)
- Donne, John, in The Metaphysical Poets, ed., Gardiner, Helen, Penguin (1972)
- Duncan-Jones, Katherine, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The Arden Shakespeare, Thompson (2004)
- Edwards, John, Inquisition, Tempus (2003)
- Greenblatt, Stephen, Will in the World – How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Pimlico (2005)
- Greer, Germaine, Shakespeare’s Wife, Bloomsbury (2007)
- Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespeare Company 1594-1642, CUP (2004)
- Guy, John, My Heart is My Own – The Life of Mary Queen of Scots, Harper Perennial (2004)
- Hadfield, Andrew, Shakespeare and Renaissance Politics, Arden Critical Companions (2003)
- Hadfield, Andrew; Hammond, Paul, Shakespeare and Renaissance Europe, Arden Critical Companions (2004)
- Hadfield, Andrew, Literature, Travel and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545-1625, OUP (2007)
- Hadfield, Andrew, Shakespeare and Republicanism, CUP (2008)
- Haynes, Alan, Sex in Elizabethan England, Sutton (2007)
- Jardine, Lisa, The Awful End of Prince William the Silent, Harper Collins (2005)
- Kamen, Henry, Early Modern European Society, Routledge (2000)
- Kermode, Frank, The Age of Shakespeare, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2005)
- Lemon, Rebecca, Treason By Words: Literature, Law & Rebellion in Shakespeare’s England, Cornell University Press (2006)
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700, Penguin (2004)
- Maxwell-Stuart, P.G., Witch Hunters: Professional Prickers, Unwitchers & Witch Finders of the Renaissance, Tempus (2003)
- Mendleson, Sarah; Crawford, Patricia, Women in Early Modern England, OUP (1998)
- Nicholson, Adam, Power and Glory: Jacobean England & The Making of the King James Bible, Harper Perennial (2003)
- Nicholl, Charles, The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street, Penguin (2008)
- Picard, Liza, Restoration London: Everyday Life in London 1660-1670, Phoenix (1997)
- Picard, Liza, Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London, Phoenix (2003)
- Plowden, Alison, Two Queens in One Isle, Sutton (2003)
- Scot, Reginald, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, (first published 1584), Dover (1972)
- Sharpe, James, Remember Remember the Fifth of November: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, Profile Books (2006)
- Sharpe, James, Witchcraft in Early Modern England, Pearson (2001)
- Shapiro, James, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, Faber (2005)
- Starkey, David, Elizabeth, Vintage Books (2001)
- Starkey, David, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, Vintage Books (2004)
- Stewart, Alan, The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I, Pimlico (2004)
- Stowe, John, A Survey of London written in the year 1598, The History Press (2005)
- Tames, Richard, Shakespeare’s London on Five Groats a Day, Thames & Hudson (2009)
- Tinniswood, Adrian, Pirates of Barbary, Jonathan Cape (2010)
- Tinniswood, Adrian, By Permission of Heaven: The Story of the Great Fire of London, Pimlico (2004)
- Travers, James, Gunpowder:The Players behind the Plot, National Archives (2005)
- Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Penguin Classics (1965)
- Wells, Stanley, Shakespeare & Co, Penguin (2006)
- Wells, Stanley, Shakespeare Sex and Love, OUP (2010)
- Wells, Stanley, with Edmundson, Paul, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, OUP (2004)
- Wormald, Jenny, Mary Queen of Scots: Politics, Passion and a Kingdom Lost, Tauris Park (2001)