Resources by Era.

pdr

Banned
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
4,259
Reaction score
832
Location
Home - but for how long?
Please don't post in this thread, PM any updates/suggestions to me instead, thanks.

THE HISTORICAL WRITER'S REFERENCE SHELF
These are the must haves of the historical writer's reference library and used daily.
*'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Water in England' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Crafts in England' or 'English Country Crafts' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Bread' by Elizabeth Davies
Questia online libary at www.questia.com
highly recommended, subscription library for solid and reliable sources.
*'Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' by Richard W. Unger
* 'Food in History' Reay Tannahill
* 'Sex in History' Reay Tannahill
* 'History Laid Bare: Love, Sex And Perversity From The Ancient Etruscans To Lawrence Of Arabia' by Richard Zacks BCA 1995 CN 4675
* 'The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914' by Jane Ashelford, published by the National Trust using their collections. Stunning UKsocial detail and historical background, details of great use to a writer.

2nd Hand Books
Useful sources of second hand and new books.
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk
Free posting to anywhere in the world.
http://www.abebooks.com
http://www.ibooknet.org/
http://www.biblio.com/
www.Alibris.com
http://www.PSBooks.co.uk
http://www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/
Collection of local history by historians
Daily Life in... series publishers
http://www.greenwood.com


Books online
http://www.bartleby.com/
http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.bibliomania.com/
http://books.google.com/ (Mrs Beeton and Eliza Acton's 19thC cookbooks online here plus so much more.)
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/about.htm
An excellent resource for finding texts online.

Dictionaries
http://www.askoxford.com/ The best for historical writing. Always use when editing or for spell checks.
http://www.etymonline.com/ Use as you write to check that the word is correct for your time period.
www.dictionaryofslang.co.uk - get the right word in the right time!
* 'Talking for Britain - a journey through the nation's dialects' by Simon Elmes, Penguin Books.
If you want to have your Kentish hero speak the correct Kentish word and not a Yorkshire one buy this.
* 'The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' - a wonderful 19thC dictionary source of cursing, swearing and such vulgarities! Available for free at:http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/dcvgr10.txt
* 'The Vulgar Tongue' by Francis Grose
* 'A Dictionary of English Folklore' Oxford UP editors Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud.
N.B. This dictionary only covers English folklore not British.
http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/
This site offers British dialects and vocabulary. NOT a scholarly site but gives a general idea.
http://phrontistery.info/
the website offers obscure words, glossaries, and other language resources.
http://worldwidewords.org
lexicographer Michael Quiniton's site, excellent for finding origins of phrases or who said it frist.

Newspapers
http://news.google.com/archivesearch
Google Historical Newspapers. This is one: http://historynews.chadwyck.com/
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/ American newspapers
http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol/archive/?OTC-HPtoppuff&ATTR=archive1782
The Times (U.K.) archives on line
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs
2 million 19thC regional and national daily and weekly newspapers on line.
National library of Scotland, newspapers
http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/index.html
London magazine
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=londonmag


'Seeing' the Places you write about - Maps
Online atlas of Roman and medieval civilization.
http://medievalmap.harvard.edu/icb/i...icb.page188868
It lets you construct your own maps of Europe and the Mediterranean choosing to include things like physical features, roads, political boundaries, market towns and universities.
www.earth.google.com
Google street view
Go in to google and find your country.
http://www.davidrumsey.com/
A fine collection of historical maps on line - now they can be overlaid with google maps in order to see the changes between then and now.
www.normal room.com
Fascinating website shows interiors, furniture etc allows a writer to 'explore the differences and similarities in architecture and home decoration' in most countries around the world.
http://www.oldmapsonline.org/
useful site for finding historic maps online
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
scroll down to find a section of historical maps.

Names
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/
This is an extremely detailed site giving names from many countries. It has numerous links to excellent articles about names, and lists problem names and inaccurate name sources on the web.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5QIv39cbUMYC&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=victorian+etiquette+%22first+names%22&source=web&ots=l2MKwul5SK&sig=CqWEczBxYzBvkv8wHvsCpjuPg4w&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA104,M1
This is the url for 'A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address' by Leslie Dunkling
A great help for the correct use of names by your historical characters.
http://www.familysearch.org/
is a genealogy site but gives access to British and UK and European data. You can find names correct for your era from various census and official lists.
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Traditional_Nicknames_in_Old_Documents_-_A_Wiki_List
Helpful list of nicknames and names so that you get the right one historically.
http://heatherrosejones.com/namemenu.html
Useful list of historical names pre 16thC
The Oxford Dictionaries of Names are excellent for British names.
www.behindthename.com
A broad selection of names from various countries, covering both Christian and Surnames. Lists the top UK 100 names each year from 1880 to 2010.
http://www.20000-names.com/female_a_names.htm
useful alphabetical lists of names from many countries.

Money
http://eh.net/hmit/
Excellent resource. Great help in converting money from one country to another, converting values from one century to another.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alan/family/N-Money.html
Another good site for understanding the differences between values in various eras.
http://www.measuringworth.com/
Another site for converting money values
http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html
Useful history of money site giving links to others.

Food
http://www.beerstein.net/articles/bsb-1.htm
An interesting article covering how people drank beer from the Middle Ages to 1920s
*'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley
http://www.foodtimeline.org/
food and recipes from prehistory to now. Very useful source for general information.
*'Bread' by Elizabeth Davies
*'Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' by Richard W. Unger
http://www.mrsbeeton.com/
access to Mrs Beeton's famous 19thC housekeeping and cookery book.

Light
http://www.ramshornstudio.com/early_lighting_1.htm
A basic run down on pre-electric lighting sources

British Birds

http://www.rspb.org.uk
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds website with pictures and audio of British birds.

British Postal service information
http://postalheritage.org.uk/exhibitions/onlineexhibitions/movingthemail/timeline The sitegives info re speeds and a general history of the British (GPO) postal services.

SOCIAL HISTORY OF GENERAL INTEREST TO ALL
*'Fish on Friday' by Brian Fagan - traces the history of fishing and how it brought about new trade and trading partnerships around the world
* 'Sugar' by Sanjida O'Connell - sugar, sugar trade and what it did to the world.
* 'Clean and Decent' by Lawrence Wright
the fascinating history of the bathroom and water closet.
http://www.larsdatter.com/index.html
Did people bathe before the 17thC? Read and see.
http://gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html
More on bathing habits pre 17thC
* 'At Day's Close' by A. Roger Ekirch
a history of nighttime, what happened at night and how people coped.
* 'The National Trust Book of Forgotten Household Crafts' John Seymour - lavishly illustrated.
Although mainly late 18th, 19thC and early 20thC there are excellent pictures and explanations for cooking over an open fire, fuel etc.
* 'Propitious Esculent' The Potato in world history by John Reader
* 'Collapse How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive' by Jared Diamond
* 'How Did it Begin?' by Dr R & L Brasch - a look at the origins of customs and superstitions.
* 'The Scent Trail' by Celia Lyttelton - interesting travels seeking the basic scents which make up many perfumes. Dates first usages.
* 'British Folk Customs' by Christine Hole - invaluable, especially the calendar of what happens when.
* 'Communities of Women' editors Barbara Brookes and Dorothy Page. Covers 13thC to 20thC across the world.
* 'The Map that Changed the World' by Simon Winchester - the first geological map and its maker.
* 'Tea classified' by Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson - National Trust book on types of tea and their historical use.
* 'A Perfect Red' by Amy Butler Greenfield - the fascinating story of the colour red, the cochineal dye and people's efforts to obtain it.
* 'The Roots of Civilisation' by John Newton - fascinating study of plants which affected humans, dyes, poisons, fibres,colours etc. and why they were important.
* 'Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants & Intoxicants' by Wolfgang Schivelbusch - traces the lively history of coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, spices, spirits and opium in western Europe
* 'Women's Work' by Elizabeth Wayland Barber - fascinating history of cloth through the ages and its effect on women's roles and everyday life
* 'A Little History of British Gardening' by Jenny Uglow
Useful general source of what grew when and who introduced it. Helpful on vegetables and flowers.
* 'Flower Wisdom' by Katherine Kear.
Guidebook to the 'language and myths about flowers'.
* 'The Middle Class, A History' by Lawrence James.
readable and scholarly, excellent for understanding the Victorian middle class.
* * 'The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914' by Jane Ashelford, published by the National Trust using their collections. Stunning social detail and historical background, details of great use to a writer.
* 'The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery' by Maureen Waller
An excellent source of information re marriage acts, elopements, Gretna Green, Fleet weddings etc.
* 'Singled Out' by Virginia Nicholson
The 2 million women left without men after the Great War (WWI), how the world treated them and how they survived.

GENERAL SOURCES
http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page
These links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history.
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/featu.../homepage.html
British Library and a fabulous resource
http://www.vam.ac.uk
Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum - good pictorial resource
http://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-do/research
The British collection of weapons and armour, fantastic resource and experts to answer questions.
http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/
Imperial War Museum UK
http://www.ipl.org/
This is the Internet Public Library, where you can ask a librarian a question and they'll get back to you with an answer.
http://www.cornucopia.org.uk/
access to 6000 UK collections in museums, libraries etc.
http://eebo.chadwyck.com/marketing/about.htm
This is Early English Resources on-line. Your library should have a subscription to it.
http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emr/
Site covers 1500-1800 and only accesses free texts.
http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/astintro.html
another site where old English documents have been collected in a book which is now on-line
http://www.h-net.org/
H-Net is an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and teachers
There is huge list of discussion groups many of which are relevant for research.
http://pages.towson.edu/duncan/acalists.html
a listing of medieval academic discussion groups.
http://tile.net/lists/
A reference guide to e-mail newsletters and discussion group lists.
http://www.balh.co.uk/about.php
The British Association for Local History...Is the national charity which promotes local history and serves local historians.
http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/help/help.htm#details
Royal Historical Society bibliography a wonderful source of books and journals and where to find them online.
www.bl.uk/sounds
A sound archive of 28,000 recordings from the 1880s to 2000. Excellent stuff.
http://www.originsnetwork.com/help/popup-aboutbo-mla2.htm
British Marriage laws also a good site for finding original document sources.
Questia online libary at www.questia.com
highly recommended, subscription library for solid and reliable sources.
History Net - British and Irish History at http://www.h-net.org/~albion/
Calculating travel times of ships
http://e-ships.net/dist.htm
http://www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/
Collection of local history by historians
Alexander Street Press also has some free resources, including In the First Person, a searchable collection of letters and diaries.
www.tannerritchie.com
do e-books or Cds of Medieval and Early Modern documents. Very valuable source of hard to find original documents from around the world.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/
An excellent site for so many things. Take your time or you'll miss so much. http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/bibliography.html
study manuscripts

Miscellaneous oddments
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/
Excellent books for weapons and uniforms, and historical buildings across the centuries and world.

http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/ History of the British postal services, first letters, stamps etc.

Musical Instruments, a few interesting AWers facts:
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41782

Calendars, Dates and Times
http://5ko.free.fr/en/jul.php
a wonderful site to compare Julienne and Gregorian calendars and get the dates right!
www.MapQuest.com and www.MapQuest.co.uk
www.SunriseSunset.com
Need to know when the sun sets in Edinburgh in April? How long twilight lasts on a winter's night in Colorado? This site will tell you. Also has moon phases, but only goes back about a hundred years.
www.TimeandDate.com
This site will generate custom calendars, including moon phases, for any year.
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_p...calendar.phtml
Only goes to 1970 but gives a good idea of how moonlight might affect your characters.
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_g...ig1_1230316327
Another phases of the moon site

http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/encyclopedia/navigation/funfacts.htm#timeline
Amazing facts about life without it!

http://www.wonderhowto.com/ This is a modern site offering videos on how to... just about anything. Of use to historical writers if you pick and choose.

British Houses, Castles, Abbeys and Historic sites.
If you want pictures and details to enrich your writing look here:
www.nationaltrust.org.uk
* 'Castle' by David Macauley
www.englishheritage.org.uk
* 'The Medieval Fortress - Castles, Forts, and Walled Cities of the Middle Ages' J. E. Kaufmann and H. W. Kaufmann; Da Capo Press; 2001
http://www.castlewales.com/home.html#Please Select
* 'Castles - Their Construction and History' Sidney Toy; Dover Publications: 1985
http://www.castles-of-britain.com/castle6.htm excellent site for learning about life in a castle.
British castles, photos and details
http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/page14.html
Welsh castles
http://www.castlewales.com/
Historic buildings
http://www.wealddown.co.uk/
Historic buildings of Sussex
http://www.sussexpast.co.uk/index.php

The Church of England/Anglican Church
http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/
Collection of church records, treasures, and other useful things

Cathedrals and Abbeys
* 'Universe of Stone' by Philip Ball
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~hart205/Cathedrals/Plan/plan.html
http://www.stgallplan.org/en/index.html
The Plan of St. Gall, a Cistercian monastery, 819-26 A.D
http://www.fountainsabbey.org.uk/ and
http://home2.btconnect.com/Crusader-Product/Fountains-Abbey.html intro to Fountains Abbey.

British Crime and Criminals
Transcripts of Trials from the Old Bailey Court.
From 1674 - 1834
Useful if you want to know about murder and treason and other mayhem. Also prices of things in your era.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Crime.jsp (useful background details to understand what happened at the Old Bailey
* 'Classic Crimes' by William Roughead. Originally published in 1900 and recently reissued. Covers notable crimes and trials in Britain in the 18th and 19thC
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/sets/72157625464218629/
photos of the ‘criminals in Newcastle upon Tyne gaol 1871-1873 from the Tyne and Wear Museum file.
Tyne and Wear Museum photo library: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/

British Police
information.
County police forces. This Wikipedia entry gives a reasonable overview of the development of policing in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...United_Kingdom
Friends of the Metropolitan Police History section found online at:
http://www.fomphc.org.uk/viewpage.php?page_id=1
Metropolitan Police Service Records at http://www.met.police.uk/history/records.htm
* 'London Police in the 1880s' by John Wilkes. Copy at google books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OO...ok_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CFkQ6AEwCg
* The Pitt Novels by Anne Perry are well researched and cover the London Police force from the 1880s

Diaries and letters original documents - some online
http://www.pikle.demon.co.uk/diaryjunction.html
Alexander Street Press's British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
This site is run by an enthusiast, lots of surrounding information re Restoration England.
Diary of Gertrude Savile 1728
http://twitter.com/#!/GertrudeSavile
Paston Letters edited by Norman Davis
http://www.worldcat.org/title/pasto...-the-fifteenth-century-in-3-parts/oclc/159225
Lisle Letters, edited by Muriel St Clare Byrne
http://www.worldcat.org/title/lisle-letters/oclc/6086809
Oxinden Letters, edited by Dorothy Gardiner
http://www.worldcat.org/title/oxind...oxinden-of-barham-and-his-circle/oclc/1150905


Games and Pastimes
http://www.davidparlett.co.uk/histocs/index.html rules for old games
http://www.pagat.com/ the rules for old and modern games

Clothes and Costumes
http://www.costumesocietyamerica.com/contact.htm
*'Mediaeval costume and life; review of their social aspects arranged under various classes and workers with instructions for making numerous types of dress' by Dorothy Hartley
*'English costume of the early Middle Ages: the tenth to the thirteenth centuries' by Iris Brooke
*'Handbook of English mediaeval costume' by C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington; with illustrations by Barbara Phillipson and Catherine Lucas
The Willett Cunnington books cover Costume from the 8thC to the 20thC and are worth having, particularly their 'History of Underclothes'.
*'Mediaeval costume and life; review of their social aspects arranged under various classes and workers with instructions for making numerous types of dress' by Dorothy Hartley
*'English costume from the early Middle Ages through the sixteenth century' by Iris Brooke
*'Medieval Costume and Fashion' by Herbert Norris
*'Racinet's full-color pictorial history of western costume : with 92 plates showing over 950 authentic costumes from the Middle Ages to 1800' by A. Racinet
*'The common man through the centuries; a book of costume drawings' by Max Barsis
http://www.marquise.de/en/index.html Costume and clothes.
* 'Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince' by Stella Mary Newton
* 'Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and
15th Centuries' by Mary Houston.
* 'The Medieval Tailor's Assistant' by Sarah Thursfield
http://www.costumes.org - dress in all historical periods.
* 'Corsets' Historical patterns and techniques' by Jill Salen
Covers corsets from 1780 -1910.
* 'Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail' by Lucy Johnson -Wonderful photos and details of the V&A Museum collection. The V and A do their own publications using their own collection for marvellous photographic details, and cover things like shoes, bags, corsets. Their books are worth seeking out.
* 'The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914' by Jane Ashelford, published by the National Trust using their collections. Stunning social detail and historical background, details of great use to a writer.
* 'Who Wore What?: Women's Wear 1861-1865' [Hardcover]
Juanita Leisch (Author) photos

Medical Sources
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA...1860&lr=&id=KwEAAAAAQAAJ&as_brr=0&output=html
* 'The Mysteries of Opium Revealed'
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA...1860&lr=&id=KwEAAAAAQAAJ&as_brr=0&output=html
* 'Boerhaave's Aphorisms, Concerning the Knowledge and Cure of Diseases, 1715.'
Both books of use for those interested in the medical and non-medical uses of opium in the 17th, 18th and 19th Cs.
* Culpepper's Herbal
Buy a copy or find one on line. This was the medical bible for centuries (17thC onwards.)
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/h/hemloc18.html This url is set for Hemlock but the website is full of useful herbal information.
* 'Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon' by Piers D. Mitchell
Interesting new ideas on some old historical ideas about medicine.
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/66/113/frameset.html
A complete online herbal
http://www.mum.org/
An odd site devoted to menstruation but there is a good historical section and some interesting facts!

Myth and Folklore
Celtic fairy and 'other world' legends

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm#fairies
http://www.geocities.com/hairy_meg/fbib/online.html
* Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
By William Butler Yeats
* The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
By W. Y. Evans-Wentz
* British Goblins
By Wirt Sikes
*The Fairy Mythology
By Thomas Keightley, W H Brooke
All available on at google books
* Encylopedia of Fairies and the Fairies in Tradition and Literature by K Briggs
*Field Guide to the Little People by N Arrowsmith
* Troublesome Things by D Purkiss
*The Good People by P Narvaez
For quick reference the fairy enclyclopedias by Franklin and Rose
* 'The Encyclopedia of Spirits: the Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods, and Goddesses' by Judika Illes - a comprehensive listing of just about every spirit from just about every culture

TRANSPORT
Trains
http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/home.asp
This is the British Railway Museum. The Research section will answer e-mail queries.

Sailing Ships
Calculating ship speeds and time to travel
http://e-ships.net/dist.htm
http://ladywashington.org
http://immigrantships.net/v2/1600v2/1600indexv2.html
*'Sailing Ships in words and pictures' by Björn Landström
http://sailing-ships.oktett.net/square-rigging.html - details of square rig sailing.
*'The History of Ships' by by Björn Landström
Any book on ships by by Björn Landström will have detailed drawings.
http://www.captaincooksociety.com/ccsu41144.htm#REF2
excellent for sailing ships
http://kentishknock.com/greatshi.shtml
an enthusiast's site.
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/
The British Maritime museum.
http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/acs/si...ritime/index.asp?siteid=3774&pageid=12954&e=e
Lancashire Maritime museum - coastal fishing smacks and shrimpers.
* 'The Command of the Ocean' by N.A.M. Rodger
Excellent look at the British Navy from 1649 -1815. Rodger worked at the National Maritime Museum
http://[email protected]
It hosts a collection of files which contain material on sailing ships and steamships and lots of related subjects.
http://www.regia.org/ships/Ships2.htm Details on Viking ships.
http://www.marmuseum.ca/marhst.html
maritime museum source
http://library.mysticseaport.org/home.cfm
British navy
http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/index.htm


Weapons
http://www.royalarmouries.org
The British Royal collection of weapons and armour from around the world, fantastic resource and experts will answer questions.
Swords
*By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen.
These urls come from our resident sword experts.
http://www.historicalweapons.com/swordsfencingterminology.html
http://www.aemma.org/
http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/liberi/contents.htm
http://www.schielhau.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_sword
http://www.thearma.org/
http://www.swordforum.com/

Sites show weapons and their use.
http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/liberi/wildRose/section8.html
daggers versus swords etc with pictures
* 'Classical Weaponry of Japan.' by Serge Mol.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17889
sword versus quarter staff discussion.
http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/ (scroll down to Western Martial Arts or you'll be stuck in karate talk all day )
http://www.martialartsplanet.com/for...c/31692-1.html (silver’s quarterstaff chat)
http://www.stoccata.org/ (Aussies getting into the mix w/ Stoccata school of defense)
www.thearma.org (European historical combat training)
http://www.aemma.org/ (European historical combat training)
http://www.oakeshott.org/ (study of medieval weaponry)
www.netsword.com (sword and medieval weapons & tactics forums)
www.swordforum.com (my local hangout- like netsword but more members)
http://www.myarmoury.com/home.php (armour forums)
http://www.ehcg.net/ (historical combat guild)
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/scholagladiatoria/ (UK based Gladiators)
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~wew/rapier.htm (rapier defense)
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/a/armsarmor.html (basic info page)
http://arsgladii.com/about.html (small fighting school)
Whole armies - or at least large units - were armed with staffs, albiet modified ones with axe heads, spikes etc: poleaxes!
http://www.scholasolis.com/Poleaxe/poleaxe_intro.htm
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...tory-Resources
war games but useful for tactics.

Guns
http://www.kismeta.com/diGrasse/PolishFirearms.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm

Rifles
http://www.elverumske.no/esc_english/weapon_eng.htm

Muskets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_bess
http://www.elverumske.no/esc_english/weapon_eng.htm
http://www.jaegerkorps.org/neumanNRA.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm

Weather
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climateresearch.html
US and SE Asia weather records
http://booty.org.uk/UK weather from BC to 20thC AD.
http://www.oldweather.org/how_to_take_part
This is a collection of weather reports from RN ships during WWI.

BY COUNTRY
Algeria
http://www.algeria.com/forums/history-histoire/
Algeria forum fro general information
* 'The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole and Lieut. J. D. Jerrold Kelley
http://casbah-algeria.blogspot.com/
Algerian history through its buildings

Australia
Colonial Land and Emigration Commission
The Emigration of Irish Women in the Nineteenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudi...9c-irish-women
* 'Irish Women in Colonial Australia'
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...age&q=&f=false
For General information try the Australian National Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topic...n/transp1.html

China
* 'The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds' by Jonathan Spence.
* 'The Genius of China : 3,000 years of Science, Discovery, and Invention' by Robert Temple - really useful history of everything from civil engineering to lacquer to metallurgy


France
*Natalie Zemon Davis - "Society and Culture in Early Modern France"
http://gallica.bnf.fr/
Collection of 688,441 documents, which you can access in English. User friendly site with lots of help for searching.
*"Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris" By Barbar Diefendorf.
http://www.maisonstclaire.org/timeline/1351.html Hundred Years' War timeline
* 'The Man Who Would Be King: The Life of Philippe d'Orléans, Regent of France' by Christine Pevitt
* Saint Simon memoirs at Guttenburg.com
* 'Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne' by Pierre Riche

Germany - the modern state

http://www.alt-berlin.info/pages/index.htm maps of Berlin

India
* 'The Story of India' by Michael Wood.
Brief for the vast subject, but well written and a fascinating introduction to the whole spectrum of Indian history.
* 'The Mughal Throne' by Abraham Eraly.
The entire history of the Mughal empire up to the takeover by Britain.
* 'White Mughals' by William Dalrymple.
Specifically about Englishmen in the colonial period, who adapted to Indian ways, turned Hindu or Muslim, and took Indian wives or mistresses.

Ireland
http://www.bartleby.com/65/pe/PenalLaw.html
* 'Peig: The Autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island' (Irish Studies) (Paperback)
by Peig Sayers (Author), Bryan MacMahon (Translator)
http://www.libraryireland.com/JoyceHistory/PartV.php
* 'Twenty Years A-Growing' by Maurice O'Sullivan
http://www.shannonheritage.com/Attractions/BunrattyCastleFolkPark/FolkParkVillageStreet/
* 'Jack's World: Farming on the Sheep's Head Peninsula, 1920-2003' by Sean Sheehan (Author), Ciaran Watson (Illustrator), Danny Gralton (Illustrator)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/?tag=absowrit-21 'Man of Aran' now a DVD but originally a documentary made in 1934 about Irish life on the remote Aran islands.
* 'Dinneen's Irish Dictionary' it has the older forms of "classical Irish," from c. 1200-1700s.
http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=65731 Details of turn of the 19thC film of Ireland. Useful pictures.
* 'The Macmillan Atlas of Irish History' edited by Sean Duffy.
Good general introduction to Irish history.

Italy
* ‘The Renaissance in Italy by John Addington Symonds’
* ‘Daily Life in Renaissance Italy by Elizabeth and Thomas Cohen’
* ‘The Towns of Italy in the Late Middle Ages by by Trevor Dean’
* ‘Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy by Trevor Dean’
* 'The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400 -1600' by Peter Thornton.
* 'The Cardinal's Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince' by Mary Hollingworth.


Japan
* 'Samurai An Illustrated History' by Mitsuko Kure, Tuttle Publishing USA and Japan.
* ‘Confessions of a Yakuza’ by John Bester (translator) and Junichi Saga. ISBN: 4-7700-1948-3.
pre-WWII details.
* 'Nihongi' for Japanese History.
Somewhat between myth and fact. Good for constructing a Kings list and Shinto beliefs. Nihongi is currently translated in Public Domain and can be found online for free. Nihongi and Kojiki can also be found here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/

Korea
* 'Samguk Yusa' by Ilyon A Korean Historical document that's somewhat between history and myth covering the Three Kingdoms Period.
* 'Hanbok: Korean Clothing' by Sunny Yang
* An article on Onggi.
http://www.lovethatkimchi.com/Kimchi_Pots/Onggi.html
Korean Food:
http://www.maangchi.com
* 'Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen' by Hisoo Shin Hepinstall (better for the upper class Korean food.)
For language questions: KoreanClass101.com
* 'Tales of a Korean Grandmother' (for Korean folktales)

The Netherlands
'The Dutch Republic' by Jonathan Israel
* 'The Embarassment of Riches' by Simon Schama
* 'Rembrandt's Eyes' by Simon Schama

Scotland
http://www.scottishhistory.com/artic...ffs_page1.html
* 'Women in Scotland 1100-1750 '
Edited by Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M. Meikle
Tuckwell Press 1999 ISBN 1 86232 046 2
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STE...S/contents.htm, the reference to shires is in Book II, line 515)
*Dictionary of the Scots Language might help.
http://www.belhelvie.org.uk/history/medieval.htm
Historical Broadsides (Scotland)
* 'Broths to Bannocks: Cooking in Scotland 1690 to the present day' by Catherine Brown A superb socila history with recipes. Great for getting details.

Spain
*Joseph O'Callaghan - "History of Medieval Spain" - one of those very dense, but ridiculously informative works.
*Richard Fletcher - "The Quest for El-Cid"
*'DAILY LIFE IN SPAIN in the Golden Age', Marcel Defourneaux
*'IMPERIAL SPAIN, 1496-1716,' J.H. Elliott
*'OLIVARES' by J.H. Eliott
*'A HISTORY OF THE MARRANOS' by Cecil Roth
*'SECRECY AND DECEIT' by David M. Gitlitz
*'THE SPANISH INQUISITION' by Henry Kaplan
*'FROM SPANISH COURT TO ITALIAN GHETTO' by Yosef Haim Yerushalmi
*'The Spaniards: an Introduction to their History'
*'The Structure of Spanish History.'

The Making of North America
The development of New France, Canada and the USA
These resources focus on the Great Lakes/Old Northwest region, early European (primarily French) exploration of Canada/US and contact with the native tribes, the fur trade, Pontiac's rebellion, the Jesuits, Algonquin and Iroquoian tribes. The following sites offer information on such topics. Some of the sites, such as Archive.org, offer broader information on other topics, but there are lots of historic/antiquated texts should one search for them.

University of Michigan Digital Texts Library: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx/
Cornell University Library's version of Making of America (might be the same as the above version): http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/
Online Collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/collections.asp
Indian Country Wisconsin: http://www.mpm.edu/wirp/ Emphasis on "kindergarten through grade 12 instruction in culture, history, sovereignty, and treaty rights of Wisconsin Indian tribes."
First Nations tribal histories and information: http://www.dickshovel.com/ In particular http://www.dickshovel.com/up.html the information available pertains to Northeast tribes).
Internet Archive Americana Libraries: http://www.archive.org/details/americana
Ohio Historical Society: http://www.ohiohistory.org/ Includes access to the "Ohio History" magazine online.
White Oak Society of Deer River, Minnesota: http://www.whiteoak.org/index.shtml This is "a non-profit organization providing living history interpretations of the fur trade era within the Great Lakes region."
The Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ Features a section on the Upper Midwest.
Internet Archive Canadian Libraries: http://www.archive.org/details/toronto
Early Canadiana Online: http://www.canadiana.org/eco.php (also available in French) Featuring "works published from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century."
Library & Archives of Canada: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/index-e.html "Canada's national collection of books, historical documents, government records, photos, films, maps, music...and more."
Canada's Digital Collections alphabetical index: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301...E/Alphabet.asp
Canada History: http://www.canadahistory.com/
Our Roots Canadian history: http://www.ourroots.ca/e/index.aspx
The Champlain Society: http://www.champlainsociety.ca/ Featuring "four centuries of adventure, travel, social change, economic growth, and nation building."
Northwestern University Library's Digital Library Collections: http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/
1st-Hand-History.org: http://www.1st-hand-history.org/index.htm Featuring "Written accounts from the 1700s and 1800s."
The "Jesuit Relations" online: http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/ Filled with much information about early French contact with native tribes and such.


BY ERA
Ancient History
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ahob/index_2.html The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain website for the 1st 5 yr project.
‘Homo britannicus’ by Chris Stringer Book summing up the findings of the AHOB 1 project.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ahob/index_2.html The next five year project - AHOB2

BABYLON and ASSYRIA
* 'Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria by Georges Contenau
* 'Babylon' by Joan Oates.

The Persian Empire
* JM Cook's The Persian Empire,
* A. T. Olmstead's History of the Persian Empire,
www.Pothos.org a discussion group of experts.
* Herodotus,
* Xenophon (though be wary of Xenophon's Cyropaedia -- he transposed a Spartan upbringing on poor Cyrus).
* Plutarch wrote a bio of Artaxerxes II.
www.livius.org.
Diodorus Siculus
Perseus Digital library may contain the above texts in translation.
www.perseus.tufts.edu
The University of Cambridge 'Ancient History'

Ancient Egypt
http://www.crystalinks.com/palermostone.html
http://www.egyptologyonline.com/manetho.htm
http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/abydoskl.html
* 'Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs' by Barbara Mertz, William Morrow imprint, Harper Collins, ISBN: 978-0-06-125276-1
http://touregypt.net/egyptantiquities/
*Joyce Tyldesley 'Judgment of the Pharaoh', a text about law.
http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/timelines/topics/means_of_transportation.htm

Sparta
http://www.spartan-world.de/
*'Sparta', edited by Michael Whitby Published by Routeledge, New York.
*Plutarch 'On Sparta' from Penguin Classics.
*'Spartan Women' by Sarah B. Pomeroy

Stonehenge
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6311939.stm
*Sarum: The Novel of England (Paperback)
by Edward Rutherfurd (Author)
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/home/
Robert Drews - "The End of the Bronze Age"

The Celts
Professor Barry Cunliffe
Professor of European Archaeology website with list of his books. http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/resources/staff_directory/barry_cunliffe
http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/urls/lists.html
ListServes, Mailing Lists, and Discussion Groups on matters Celtic.

Classical History
The Romans
http://www.roman-britain.org/main.htm
* 'Hannibal's War' by J.F. Lazenby.
http://www.livius.org
* 'Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families' by Friedrich Munzer.
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/
* 'The Fall of the Roman Empire' by Peter Heather
http://www.romanarmy.com/cms/
* 'The Culture of the Roman Plebs' by Nicholas Horsfall
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ classical
*Peter Stein - 'Roman Law in European Legal History'
*Adrian Goldsworthy - "The Punic Wars"
*Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
*'Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity' by Sarah Pomeroy.
* 'The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians' by Peter Heather
* 'Rome's Gothic Wars' by Michael Kulikowski
* 'The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians' by J.B. Bury
* 'History of the Goths' by Herwig Wolfram
* 'Roman Military Equipment: From the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome' by M.C. Bishop

The End of Roman and Post Roman Britain
* 'Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070'
by Robin Fleming, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2010
ISBN: 9780713990645
* 'The Ending of Roman Britain' by Esmonde Cleary A.S.,New York: Routledge, 1989.
* 'The End of Roman Britain' by Jones, Michael E. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.


The Greeks
http://www.crystalinks.com/greece.html
* 'Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece' by Lesley Adkins and Roy A Adkins. Oxford University Press
http://www.scienceblog.com/community...199701827.html
* 'Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology with translation' edited by Michael Trapp
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/hisar/people/jw/
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5021.html
http://www.ashmolean.museum/ash/faqs/q004/

The Vikings
http://www.intercollege.se/viking/my...y2/index2.html
http://www.rosala-viking-centre.com/history.htm
http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/
*'A History of the Vikings'. (Oxford Monographs in International Law) Gwyn Jones
*'The Vikings' (Penguin History) Else Roesdahl
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/
http://www.regia.org/ships/Ships2.htm Viking ships.


Mediaeval History
* ' The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century' (Paperback)
by Ian Mortimer. A good basic book for beginners to learn about the 14thC
http://www.medievalcookery.com/
excellent source for food and recipes.
* 'The Book of the Knight of the Tower: Manners for young medieval women' by Rebecca Barnhouse 2006
Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 1 4039 6991 4
http://www.uwm.edu/~carlin/ Hunt down the site for a long list of resources.
*'Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England', 1570-1640 (Past and Present Publications) (Paperback) by Martin Ingram (Author)
* 'Sex , Love and Relationships: The Medieval Idea of Marriage' by Christopher Brooke
Oxford University Press 1991 edition ISBN 0 19 285239 6
* 'Handbook of Medieval Sexuality' Edited by Vern.L.. Bullough and James. A. Brundage
Garland 1996 ISBN 0 8153 3662 4
* 'Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others' by Ruth Mazo
Karras
Routledge 2005 ISBN 9780415 289634
* 'Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook' edited by Conor McCarthy
Routledge 2004 ISBN 0 415 30746-5
* 'Women in Anglos-Saxon England' by Christine Fell
http://www.maisonstclaire.org/timeline/1351.html Hundred Years War time line.
*Joseph & Francis Gies - "Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages"
http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/towns.html useful site with excellent details of some towns
*'Medieval Women: a Sourcebook' by Emilie Amt
*'Life in a Medieval Castle', Joseph & Frances Gies
http://www.worldjousting.com/ a site for information about jousting.
*'Life in a Medieval Village', Joseph & Frances Gies
*'Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages' Joseph & Frances Gies
* 'The Structures of Everyday Life' by Fernand Braudel
http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/Technology.html look here to see how things worked for your trades and crafts people.
*'The Medieval Traveller' by Norbert Ohler
* Original document: The Paston Letters. They can be found on several sites or bought in book form.
* 'The Lady in Medieval England 1000-1500' by Peter Coss
Sutton 1998 ISBN 0 75090802 5
* 'English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages' by Jennifer.C. Ward
Longman 1992 ISBN 0 582 05966 6
* 'Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth Century Anglo Norman Realm' by Susan M. Johns
Manchester University Press 2003 ISBN 07190 6305 1
* 'Common Women: Prostitution And Sexuality in Medieval England' by Ruth Mazo
Karras Oxford University Press 1996 ISBN 0 19 506242 6
* 'Medieval Women Social History of Women in England 450-1500' by Henrietta Leyser.
* 'Memoirs of A Medieval Woman: The Life And Times Of Margery Kempe' by Louise
Collis Harper & Row 1983 edition ISBN 0 06 090992 7
http://www.larsdatter.com/index.html
http://gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html
Both sites offer details on baths and bathing pre 17thC
* 'Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince' by Stella Mary Newton
* 'Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries' by Mary Houston.
* 'The Medieval Tailor's Assistant' by Sarah Thursfield
* 'Medieval Costume and Fashions' by Herbert Norris
* 'The Medieval Traveller' by Ohler and Hillier.
* Routledge Press, 'Medieval Trade, Travel, and Exploration: An Encyclopedia'
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/2210bib.htm
Professor John Munro at the University of Toronto on Mediaeval Trade
http://www.netserf.org/ list of other sites
http://the-orb.net/ University site with info
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html Another useful university site.
http://www.deremilitari.org/ Another scholarly site looking at matters military
http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/soldier/database/
The Soldier in later Medieval England, the official lists of the soldiers and knights, Agincourt archers listed here.
* 'War and chivalry: the conduct and perception of war in England and Normandy' by Matthew Strickland and available on google books.
* 'The Medieval Underworld' by Andrew McCall - explains how the 'unsavory' sections of society (gays, prostitutes, bandits to name a few) fared in medieval Europe

17th Century England
Map of London
http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/
* The 17thC A-Z of London at the Guildhall Library
'Loudinopolois an historical discourse or Perluotration' by James Howell pub 1657
lists every main street and building in London.
* 'The Weaker Vessel - Woman's Lot in the 17thC' by Antonia Fraser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_(ship)
* 'The Making of the English Middle Class, 1660-1730' by Peter Earle
Helpful info about business women in London.
http://immigrantships.net/v2/1600v2/1600indexv2.html
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/chairs/linguist/real/independent/lampeter/lamphome.htm
*BBC DVDs 'Tales from the Green Valley'
Four practical archaeologists spent one year living and working on a 1620s farm. Everything was authentic, clothes, food, way of life. If you want to understand what Stewart England/Wales was like for the majority of people you should study this DVD.
*'Her Own Life' autobiographical writings by 17thC women' edited by Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox.
*'Women's Writing in Stuart England' edited by Sylvia Brown

17th Century - The (U.K.) Civil Wars
http://www.lukehistory.com/resources/index.html
original ballads and pamphlets.
*'Behemoth or The Long Parliament' (Paperback) by Thomas Hobbes
*'Cromwell' by Antonia Fraser
*'The King's Peace 1637-41', 'The King's War 1641-1647' and 'The Trial of Charles I' by C.V. Wedgewood
*Tristram Hunt 'The English Civil War at First Hand'
*'The Grand Quarrel' Women's Memoirs of the English Civil War' edited by Roger Hudson.

18th Century
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/history.html
*The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh
http://www.oldlondonmaps.com
Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1792 – 1799
*Gale's Eighteenth Century Collections Online
* University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford by Graham Midgley, Yale University Press
http://www.pepysdiary.com/ run by an enthusiast. Has much background info like weather and temps and general info re each day's happenings.
* 'Dr Johnson's London' by Liza Picard
http://www.18thcenturyhistory.com/
* 'The Making of the English Middle Class, 1660-1730' by Peter Earle
Helpful info about business women in London.
http://twitter.com/The18thCentury
18thC Blog
http://theragsoftime.blogspot.com/
* ‘England 1700: Scenes from London Life’ by Maureen Waller
* ‘The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England’ by John Styles ‘Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England’
* ‘English Society in the Eighteenth Century’ by Roy Porter


The American Revolution
http://www.history.org/
Colonial Williamsburg
* 'The Most Dangerous Man in America'
* 'The Diplomacy of the American Revolution'
http://research.history.org/Digital_History_Center.cfm
* 'Common Sense' by Thomas Paine
* 'Liberty' by Thomas Fleming
http://www.mountvernon.org/ Washington's home.
* '1776' by David McCullough
http://www.jamesriverplantations.org/
* 'Autobiography' of Ben Franklin
* 'REDCOATS AND REBELS The American Revolution Through British Eyes' by Christopher Hibbert
* 'The Glorious Cause' by Robert Middlekauff
http://www.monticello.org/ Jefferson's home.
‘Marines in the Revolution: A History of the Continental Marines in the American Revolution 1775-1783' by Charles R. Smith.
* 'That's Not in My American History Book' by Thomas Ayres - US history from the 1700s through the 1900s
http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/collections.html
Colonial Williamsburg: http://www.history.org/history/
Claude Moore Colonial Farm:
http://www.1771.org
*'Rise to Rebellion' by Jeff Shaara - fiction.
Non-fiction resources might include: James Nelson's Washington's Secret Navy, George Washington's Great Gamble, Benedict Arnold's Navy and With Fire and Sword; David McCullough's 1776; Arthur B. Tourtellot's Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the war of the American Revolution--though he makes suppositions and conclusions only supported by British documentation; Thomas B. Allen's Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War; Paul Lockhart's The Whites of their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington; Scoop on Clothes, Homes and Daily Life in Colonial America by Elizabeth Raum; Alan Taylor's American Colonies: The Settling of North America; Ruth Dean's Life in the American Colonies; Women Soldiers, Spies and Patriots of the American Revolution by Martha Knieb; The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson; The Female Soldier in the War of the Revolution. Deborah Sampson was the first known woman to impersonate a man to join the army and combat. Hands down, the Single Most Valuable source of information in my research has been The Naval Documents of the American Revolution. The NDAR is a collection of the decisions made to build the Continental Navy and Marines, records of the orders given and what changes were made. There is a goldmine of detail, such as stores, rosters, dress, poor medical treatments, uniforms, desertions, etc. Then, it switches to corresponding British documents. These should be available at your local library, but I hunted down some to purchase for my own.


Regency
*'What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew' by Daniel Pool
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs
2 million 19thC regional and national daily and weekly newspapers on line.
*'Georgette Heyer’s Regency World' by Jennifer Kloester
http://www.georgianindex.net/
Very useful with lists and other resources.
*'An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England' by Venetia Murray
*'The Regency Underworld' by Donald A. Low
*'The A to Z of Regency London'
*The Connoisseur Period Guides: Late Georgian 1760-1810
*The Connoisseur Period Guides: The Regency Period 1810-1830
*Jane Austen Centre Magazine
*A Regency Lexicon
*A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811 edition of the slang dictionary--invaluable for Regency writers)
*New Plays on the London Stage 1700-1810 (when your characters go to the theater, what do they see?)
*The Festival of Love (drinking songs, published 1812) More songbooks from the same site
*Search Georgian-Era Bath Newspapers Abstracts and excerpts, not full text, but a lot of valuable info nonetheless. When searching, make sure you press the green Search button, because Enter is linked to a different search on the page.
* Internet Library of Early Journals (18th and 19th century)
* 'Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy' by Ian Kelly
* 'Voices from the World of Jane Austen' by Malcolm Day
Excellent source of real people's comments about all manner of subjects. Useful for dialogue.

US Colonial History
Colonial Americahttp://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/
*American Artisans: Crafting Society Identity, 1750-1850 (Paperback) by Howard B. Rock (Editor), Paul A. Gilje (Editor), Robert Asher
*'Everyday Life In Colonial America From 1607-1783 '
by Dale Taylor, one of The Writer's Guide To Everday Life series from Writer's Digest Books.
*'Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies', by Julia Cherry Spruill.
*"Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
*"Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier" by Joanna Stratton.
*"The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America" by John Demos.
http://research.history.org/Digital_History_Center.cfm
* 'Cities in Revolt: urban life in America, 1743-1776' by Carl Bridenbaugh.
http://www.history.org/
http://www.jamesriverplantations.org/
http://www.monticello.org/
http://www.mountvernon.org/

19thC US History
*Thomas J. Schlereth Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915
http://www.city-data.com/
data from numerous sources to create complete and interesting profiles of U.S. cities, include photos.
*'Everyday Life' series are good. I also have 'The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840' and 'The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876.'
*Historical Broadsides (U.S.)
* Fanny Farmer's Cook book
http://edwardianpromenade.wordpress.com/ general information at this author's blog and some good links.
* 'Grappling with Death: The Union Second Corps Hospital at Gettysburg' by Roland R. Maust
http://www.gdg.org/Research/Authored Items/maust.html
Here is a great site which helped me research the weapons for my Gettysburg story.
* ‘Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West’ by Marcia Hensley, published by High Plains Press.
* ‘ Letters of a Woman Homesteader’ by Elinore Pruitt Stewart.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/webguns.htm
Here's another site for weapons:
http://www.civilwarhome.com/weapons.htm
More weapons/tactics stuff:
http://www.gdg.org/Research/Other ...w/prologue.htm
Here's some more Civil War medicine info:
http://www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicineintro.htm

19th Century Britain: Victorian
http://www.britishempire.co.uk/timeline/19century.htm time line for the 19thC
* 'The Victorians' by A.N. Wilson.
A good general overview of the period with many illustrations and excellent bibliography for further research.
http://www.channel4.com/history/micr...19/part05.html
Good general introduction to the era.
* 'The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine - a thorough piece of research using excellent resources. Part of the Penguin History Series.
http://victorianresearch.org/
* 'London Labour and the London Poor' by Henry Mayhew (Penguin Classics) (Paperback) the condensed version. Or google books has the full four volumes.
* Clubs and Club Life in London By John Timbs available on Google Books as PDF
http://www.victorianlondon.org/
dictionary of Victorian London Superb.
*Available as a book. 'A Dictionary of Victorian London: An A-Z of the Great Metropolis' (Anthem Nineteenth Century Studies) by Lee Jackson
http://www.victorianstation.com/queen.html Life and times of the Queen
* The Clubs of London By Charles Marsh available on Google Books as PDF
http://www.abcounties.co.uk/index.htm The counties of England as in Victoria's time.
*Judith Flanders 'The Victorian House' (Highly recommended) Good information about servants' work as well as the mistress.
* 'Consuming Passions' by Judith Flanders - makes you think again about Victorians.
http://www.victorianweb.org - a reasonably well moderated site with some good resources.[URL="http://www.OldHouseBooks.co.uk"URL]
maps and guide books of 19thC London and the UK
http://www.oldlondonmaps.com
Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster
* 'A Victorian Household' by Shirley Nicholson
Using Marion Sambourne's (1851-1914) diaries, letters and memorabilia, and photographs based on her married home which is now a museum in London this is a solid Middle Class resource.
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/05/dining-in-state.html
This blog gives details of Edwardian and Victorian recipes and dinner menus.
*'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley
http://www.mrsbeeton.com/
Mrs Beeton's housekeeping and cookery book. Excellent site with comments etc. Most helpful.
*'Water in England' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Crafts in England' or 'English Country Crafts' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Bread' by Elizabeth Davies
*Reproductions of Cookery books by Mrs. Eliza Acton and Mrs Isabella Beeton are invaluable for household details and management of servants.
Mrs Beeton on line at: http://www.mrsbeeton.com
*BBC DVDs: 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden', 'The Victorian Kitchen', The Victorian Flower Garden'.
This stunning series of programmes, filmed over a year, are a must for any historical writer who wants to avoid errors about Victorian servants, the Great House and its occupants, food, cooking, and what happened when. Using only Victorian equipment the cook and gardener, who had been working in the Great Houses all their lives, show how the garden and kitchen would have been run. Superb resource.
* 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden' by Jennifer Davies.
The book of the BBC series.
* 'The Victorian Kitchen' by Jennifer Davies.
The book of the BBC series. Excellent bibliography for further reading
* 'Period Piece' by Gwen Raverat - Darwin's granddaughter and the book is about her growing up within the family.
http://www.victoriana.com/library/Dressing/1858-62.htm
basic information about clothing
* 'Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail' by Lucy Johnson -Wonderful photos and details of the V&A Museum collection
http://www.fashion-era.com/undergarments.htm
Again basic information about clothing.
* 'Britannia's Daughters - Women of the British Empire' by Joanna Trollope. Solid research about women's contributions to the Empire. Excellent material for creating realistic non-conventional Victorian female characters.
* 'Other People's Daughters - the life and Times of the Governess' by Ruth Brandon - excellent source of original documents.
* 'The Governess - Letters from the Colonies 1862-1882' by Patricia Clarke. - more original documents.
* 'Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839-1939' by Margaret Forster.
Gives a detailed picture of how Victorian society treated women.
* 'The Victorian Household Album' compiled by Elizabeth Drury and Phillipa Lewis. A collection of pictures, adverts, illustrations etc.
* 'The Victorians and Sport' by Mike Huggins - excellent research and info about many no longer played sports or pastimes.
* 'Not in Front of the Servants' by Frank Victor Dawes. A National Trust book using National Trust records and original documents plus 700 letters. Covers the work, wages and duties of all household servants 1800 - 1940 and is an easy and enjoyable read.
* 'The Complete Servant' by Samuel and Sarah Adams, first published in 1825, my edition is the 1989 Southover Press`, ISBN 1 870962 03 6. Full details of who to employ, what they do and wages etc. invaluable.
* 'Tales of the Old Gardeners' by Jean Stone and Louise Brodie. Covers gardens and their workers from 1850-1950. Easy read, useful general information for adding 'artistic verisimilitude' in the form of little details.
* 'Victorian Farm' by Alex Langlands (Author), Peter Ginn (Author), Ruth Goodman (Author)
DVD of the same 'Victorian Farm' available from Amazon.
This is the BBC series where practical archaeologists lived and worked as Victorians on a Victorian farm for a year. Solid Research, a good source.
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs
2 million 19thC regional and national daily and weekly newspapers on line.
* 'Victorian Do-It-Yourself - Handicrafts and Pastimes of the 1880s' by E.J. Wiseman
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/sets/72157625464218629/
photos of the ‘criminals in Newcastle upon Tyne gaol 1871-1873 from the Tyne and Wear Museum
Tyne and Wear Museum photo library: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/
* 'The Middle Class, A History' by Lawrence James.
readable and scholarly, excellent for understanding the Victorian middle class.
* 'The Shepherd's Life' by W.H. Hudson
A remarkable collection of interviews with a Downland shepherd about his life and work. 1st published in 1910.
* 'Victorian London, The Life of a City 1840-1870', by Liza Picard, 2005


Edwardian Britain
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/2006/05/dining-in-state.html
details here of recipes and menus.Read E.E. Nesbit's children's books: 'Five Children and It', 'The Would-be-Goods', 'The Phoenix and the Carpet' all written at and about the early 1900s. Excellent for voc and customs and telling details.

20th Century Sources
http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/home.asp
* 'Debs at War' by Anne de Courcy. If you want accurate details of Debutantes, The Season, Court Presentation, clothing, behaviour 1900-1939c this is the book. Impeccable research.
http://www.popcenter.org
popular culture sources
* 'The Country House Remembered' edited by Merlin Waterson
Dukes, Duchesses, Lords and Ladies remembering life in their stately homes. Excellent resource for attitudes, money, servants, how the days were organised.

Colonialism
*"The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism" by Ashis Nandy.
*"Culture and Imperialism" by Edward Said.
*'Orientalism' by Edward Said.
*'Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa' by Jean and John Comaroff.

WW1 The Great War/ The First World War
*'Fighting Pilots ' by Patrick Pringle
http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm Verdun
* Verdun 1916: 'They Shall Not Pass' (Campaign) (Paperback) by Ian Drury (Author), Howard Gerrard (Illustrator
http://www.oldweather.org/how_to_take_part
A collection of weather reports from RN ships during WWI
* The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (Paperback) by Sir Alistair Horne (Author)
* Verdun (Great Battles) (Hardcover) by David Mason (Author)
* German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870-1916 (Cambridge Military Histories) (Hardcover)
http://www.1914-1918.net/
* 'A War In Words: The First World War in Diaries and Letters' by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis
* 'Brothers in War: One Family’s Ultimate Great War Sacrifice' by Michael Walsh
* 'Goodbye to All That' by Robert Graves
* The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, and Siegfreid Sassoon.
* 'Testament of Youth' by Vera Brittain. non-fiction. She was a VAD at the front. Graphic details.
* 'Singled Out' by Virginia Nicholson
The 2 million women left without men after the Great War (WWI), how the world treated them and how they survived.
http://www.1914-1918.net/maps.htm
excellent site cover the whole war and has maps.

The Second World War/ WWII

*"Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics" by Claudia Koonz.
http://www.ne-diary.bpears.org.uk/Bck/Popular.html
Very useful for what your MCs did in the1940s
*"The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders" by Ernst Klee.
*"Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" By Daniel Goldhagen.
http://www.ne-diary.bpears.org.uk/Bck/Popular.html
*"Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II" by Stephen Fritz.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/
personal memories of WWII plus excellent historical comment.
* Debs at War' by Anne de Courcy. If you want details of Debutantes, The Season, Court Presentation etc this is the book. Impeccable research from personal accounts.
http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/
Imperial War Museum UK
http://www.combinedops.com/index.htm
A website devoted to WWII combine operations. British with excellent sources
http://www.dambusters.org.uk
WWII Dambusters website
 
Last edited:

Puma

Retired and loving it!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
7,340
Reaction score
1,535
Location
Central Ohio
pdr has been banned from AW and will no longer be able to maintain this useful thread.

If someone who plans to be around for awhile is inclined to copy all of the first post into a new box and put in updates in the future, this is the time to do it so there's no wondering what to do the next time someone has a resource to add. Puma
 

Flicka

Dull Old Person
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 8, 2010
Messages
1,249
Reaction score
147
Location
Far North
Website
www.theragsoftime.com
OK, since no one else has done this and I do plan to stick around (if I'm allowed to), I'm doing what Puma suggested.

Please don't post in this thread, PM any updates/suggestions to me instead, thanks.


THE HISTORICAL WRITER'S REFERENCE SHELF
These are the must haves of the historical writer's reference library and used daily.
*'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Water in England' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Crafts in England' or 'English Country Crafts' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Bread' by Elizabeth Davies
Questia online libary at www.questia.com
highly recommended, subscription library for solid and reliable sources.
*'Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' by Richard W. Unger
* 'Food in History' Reay Tannahill
* 'Sex in History' Reay Tannahill
* 'History Laid Bare: Love, Sex And Perversity From The Ancient Etruscans To Lawrence Of Arabia' by Richard Zacks BCA 1995 CN 4675
* 'The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914' by Jane Ashelford, published by the National Trust using their collections. Stunning UKsocial detail and historical background, details of great use to a writer.

2nd Hand Books
Useful sources of second hand and new books.
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk
Free posting to anywhere in the world.
http://www.abebooks.com
http://www.ibooknet.org/
http://www.biblio.com/
www.Alibris.com
http://www.PSBooks.co.uk
http://www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/
Collection of local history by historians
Daily Life in... series publishers
http://www.greenwood.com


Books online
http://www.bartleby.com/
http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.bibliomania.com/
https://dimenovels.org/
http://books.google.com/ (Mrs Beeton and Eliza Acton's 19thC cookbooks online here plus so much more.)
http://www.digitalbookindex.org/about.htm
An excellent resource for finding texts online.


Dictionaries
http://www.askoxford.com/ The best for historical writing. Always use when editing or for spell checks.
http://www.etymonline.com/ Use as you write to check that the word is correct for your time period.
www.dictionaryofslang.co.uk - get the right word in the right time!
* 'Talking for Britain - a journey through the nation's dialects' by Simon Elmes, Penguin Books.
If you want to have your Kentish hero speak the correct Kentish word and not a Yorkshire one buy this.
* 'The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue' - a wonderful 19thC dictionary source of cursing, swearing and such vulgarities! Available for free at:http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/dcvgr10.txt
* 'The Vulgar Tongue' by Francis Grose
* 'A Dictionary of English Folklore' Oxford UP editors Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud.
N.B. This dictionary only covers English folklore not British.
http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/
This site offers British dialects and vocabulary. NOT a scholarly site but gives a general idea.
http://phrontistery.info/
the website offers obscure words, glossaries, and other language resources.
http://worldwidewords.org
lexicographer Michael Quiniton's site, excellent for finding origins of phrases or who said it frist.

Newspapers
http://news.google.com/archivesearch
Google Historical Newspapers. This is one: http://historynews.chadwyck.com/
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/ American newspapers
http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol...TR=archive1782
The Times (U.K.) archives on line
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs
2 million 19thC regional and national daily and weekly newspapers on line.
National library of Scotland, newspapers
http://digital.nls.uk/broadsides/index.html
London magazine
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu...l?id=londonmag


'Seeing' the Places you write about - Maps
Online atlas of Roman and medieval civilization.
http://medievalmap.harvard.edu/icb/i...icb.page188868
It lets you construct your own maps of Europe and the Mediterranean choosing to include things like physical features, roads, political boundaries, market towns and universities.
www.earth.google.com
Google street view
Go in to google and find your country.
http://www.davidrumsey.com/
A fine collection of historical maps on line - now they can be overlaid with google maps in order to see the changes between then and now.
www.normal room.com
Fascinating website shows interiors, furniture etc allows a writer to 'explore the differences and similarities in architecture and home decoration' in most countries around the world.
http://www.oldmapsonline.org/
useful site for finding historic maps online
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/
scroll down to find a section of historical maps.

Names
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/
This is an extremely detailed site giving names from many countries. It has numerous links to excellent articles about names, and lists problem names and inaccurate name sources on the web.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5QI...sult#PPA104,M1
This is the url for 'A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of Address' by Leslie Dunkling
A great help for the correct use of names by your historical characters.
http://www.familysearch.org/
is a genealogy site but gives access to British and UK and European data. You can find names correct for your era from various census and official lists.
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Tra..._-_A_Wiki_List
Helpful list of nicknames and names so that you get the right one historically.
http://heatherrosejones.com/namemenu.html
Useful list of historical names pre 16thC
The Oxford Dictionaries of Names are excellent for British names.
www.behindthename.com
A broad selection of names from various countries, covering both Christian and Surnames. Lists the top UK 100 names each year from 1880 to 2010.
http://www.20000-names.com/female_a_names.htm
useful alphabetical lists of names from many countries.

Money
http://eh.net/hmit/
Excellent resource. Great help in converting money from one country to another, converting values from one century to another.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alan/family/N-Money.html
Another good site for understanding the differences between values in various eras.
http://www.measuringworth.com/
Another site for converting money values
http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies...t/howmuch.html
Useful history of money site giving links to others.
http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/data.php
Wages and prices across several periods and cultures


Food
Food timeline
http://www.beerstein.net/articles/bsb-1.htm
An interesting article covering how people drank beer from the Middle Ages to 1920s
*'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley
http://www.foodtimeline.org/
food and recipes from prehistory to now. Very useful source for general information.
*'Bread' by Elizabeth Davies
*'Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' by Richard W. Unger
http://www.mrsbeeton.com/
access to Mrs Beeton's famous 19thC housekeeping and cookery book.

Weather
UK weather 1884-1993
Historical weather events in Britain

Light
http://www.ramshornstudio.com/early_lighting_1.htm
A basic run down on pre-electric lighting sources

British Birds

http://www.rspb.org.uk
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds website with pictures and audio of British birds.

British Postal service information
http://postalheritage.org.uk/exhibit...email/timeline The sitegives info re speeds and a general history of the British (GPO) postal services.

SOCIAL HISTORY OF GENERAL INTEREST TO ALL
*'Fish on Friday' by Brian Fagan - traces the history of fishing and how it brought about new trade and trading partnerships around the world
* 'Sugar' by Sanjida O'Connell - sugar, sugar trade and what it did to the world.
* 'Clean and Decent' by Lawrence Wright
the fascinating history of the bathroom and water closet.
http://www.larsdatter.com/index.html
Did people bathe before the 17thC? Read and see.
http://gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html
More on bathing habits pre 17thC
* 'At Day's Close' by A. Roger Ekirch
a history of nighttime, what happened at night and how people coped.
* 'The National Trust Book of Forgotten Household Crafts' John Seymour - lavishly illustrated.
Although mainly late 18th, 19thC and early 20thC there are excellent pictures and explanations for cooking over an open fire, fuel etc.
* 'Propitious Esculent' The Potato in world history by John Reader
* 'Collapse How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive' by Jared Diamond
* 'How Did it Begin?' by Dr R & L Brasch - a look at the origins of customs and superstitions.
* 'The Scent Trail' by Celia Lyttelton - interesting travels seeking the basic scents which make up many perfumes. Dates first usages.
* 'British Folk Customs' by Christine Hole - invaluable, especially the calendar of what happens when.
* 'Communities of Women' editors Barbara Brookes and Dorothy Page. Covers 13thC to 20thC across the world.
* 'The Map that Changed the World' by Simon Winchester - the first geological map and its maker.
* 'Tea classified' by Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson - National Trust book on types of tea and their historical use.
* 'A Perfect Red' by Amy Butler Greenfield - the fascinating story of the colour red, the cochineal dye and people's efforts to obtain it.
* 'The Roots of Civilisation' by John Newton - fascinating study of plants which affected humans, dyes, poisons, fibres,colours etc. and why they were important.
* 'Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants & Intoxicants' by Wolfgang Schivelbusch - traces the lively history of coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, spices, spirits and opium in western Europe
* 'Women's Work' by Elizabeth Wayland Barber - fascinating history of cloth through the ages and its effect on women's roles and everyday life
* 'A Little History of British Gardening' by Jenny Uglow
Useful general source of what grew when and who introduced it. Helpful on vegetables and flowers.
* 'Flower Wisdom' by Katherine Kear.
Guidebook to the 'language and myths about flowers'.
* 'The Middle Class, A History' by Lawrence James.
readable and scholarly, excellent for understanding the Victorian middle class.
* * 'The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914' by Jane Ashelford, published by the National Trust using their collections. Stunning social detail and historical background, details of great use to a writer.
* 'The English Marriage: Tales of Love, Money and Adultery' by Maureen Waller
An excellent source of information re marriage acts, elopements, Gretna Green, Fleet weddings etc.
* 'Singled Out' by Virginia Nicholson
The 2 million women left without men after the Great War (WWI), how the world treated them and how they survived.

GENERAL SOURCES
http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page
These links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history.
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/featu.../homepage.html
British Library and a fabulous resource
http://www.vam.ac.uk
Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum - good pictorial resource
http://www.royalarmouries.org/what-we-do/research
The British collection of weapons and armour, fantastic resource and experts to answer questions.
http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/
Imperial War Museum UK
http://www.ipl.org/
This is the Internet Public Library, where you can ask a librarian a question and they'll get back to you with an answer.
http://www.cornucopia.org.uk/
access to 6000 UK collections in museums, libraries etc.
http://eebo.chadwyck.com/marketing/about.htm
This is Early English Resources on-line. Your library should have a subscription to it.
http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emr/
Site covers 1500-1800 and only accesses free texts.
http://home.freeuk.net/don-aitken/ast/astintro.html
another site where old English documents have been collected in a book which is now on-line
http://www.h-net.org/
H-Net is an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and teachers
There is huge list of discussion groups many of which are relevant for research.
http://pages.towson.edu/duncan/acalists.html
a listing of medieval academic discussion groups.
http://tile.net/lists/
A reference guide to e-mail newsletters and discussion group lists.
http://www.balh.co.uk/about.php
The British Association for Local History...Is the national charity which promotes local history and serves local historians.
http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibl/help/help.htm#details
Royal Historical Society bibliography a wonderful source of books and journals and where to find them online.
www.bl.uk/sounds
A sound archive of 28,000 recordings from the 1880s to 2000. Excellent stuff.
http://www.originsnetwork.com/help/p...outbo-mla2.htm
British Marriage laws also a good site for finding original document sources.
Questia online libary at www.questia.com
highly recommended, subscription library for solid and reliable sources.
History Net - British and Irish History at http://www.h-net.org/~albion/
Calculating travel times of ships
http://e-ships.net/dist.htm
http://www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/
Collection of local history by historians
Alexander Street Press also has some free resources, including In the First Person, a searchable collection of letters and diaries.
www.tannerritchie.com
do e-books or Cds of Medieval and Early Modern documents. Very valuable source of hard to find original documents from around the world.
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/
An excellent site for so many things. Take your time or you'll miss so much. http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/e...liography.html
study manuscripts

Miscellaneous oddments
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/
Excellent books for weapons and uniforms, and historical buildings across the centuries and world.

http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/ History of the British postal services, first letters, stamps etc.

Musical Instruments, a few interesting AWers facts:
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41782

Calendars, Dates and Times
http://5ko.free.fr/en/jul.php
a wonderful site to compare Julienne and Gregorian calendars and get the dates right!
www.MapQuest.com and www.MapQuest.co.uk
www.SunriseSunset.com
Need to know when the sun sets in Edinburgh in April? How long twilight lasts on a winter's night in Colorado? This site will tell you. Also has moon phases, but only goes back about a hundred years.
www.TimeandDate.com
This site will generate custom calendars, including moon phases, for any year.
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_p...calendar.phtml
Only goes to 1970 but gives a good idea of how moonlight might affect your characters.
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_g...ig1_1230316327
Another phases of the moon site

http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/...s.htm#timeline
Amazing facts about life without it!

http://www.wonderhowto.com/ This is a modern site offering videos on how to... just about anything. Of use to historical writers if you pick and choose.

British Houses, Castles, Abbeys and Historic sites.
If you want pictures and details to enrich your writing look here:
www.nationaltrust.org.uk
* 'Castle' by David Macauley
www.englishheritage.org.uk
* 'The Medieval Fortress - Castles, Forts, and Walled Cities of the Middle Ages' J. E. Kaufmann and H. W. Kaufmann; Da Capo Press; 2001
http://www.castlewales.com/home.html#Please Select
* 'Castles - Their Construction and History' Sidney Toy; Dover Publications: 1985
http://www.castles-of-britain.com/castle6.htm excellent site for learning about life in a castle.
British castles, photos and details
http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/page14.html
Welsh castles
http://www.castlewales.com/
Historic buildings
http://www.wealddown.co.uk/
Historic buildings of Sussex
http://www.sussexpast.co.uk/index.php

The Church of England/Anglican Church
http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/
Collection of church records, treasures, and other useful things

Cathedrals and Abbeys
* 'Universe of Stone' by Philip Ball
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~hart205/Cathedrals/Plan/plan.html
http://www.stgallplan.org/en/index.html
The Plan of St. Gall, a Cistercian monastery, 819-26 A.D
http://www.fountainsabbey.org.uk/ and
http://home2.btconnect.com/Crusader-...ins-Abbey.html intro to Fountains Abbey.

British Crime and Criminals
Transcripts of Trials from the Old Bailey Court.
From 1674 - 1834
Useful if you want to know about murder and treason and other mayhem. Also prices of things in your era.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Crime.jsp (useful background details to understand what happened at the Old Bailey
* 'Classic Crimes' by William Roughead. Originally published in 1900 and recently reissued. Covers notable crimes and trials in Britain in the 18th and 19thC
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_new...7625464218629/
photos of the ‘criminals in Newcastle upon Tyne gaol 1871-1873 from the Tyne and Wear Museum file.
Tyne and Wear Museum photo library: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/

British Police
information.
County police forces. This Wikipedia entry gives a reasonable overview of the development of policing in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...United_Kingdom
Friends of the Metropolitan Police History section found online at:
http://www.fomphc.org.uk/viewpage.php?page_id=1
Metropolitan Police Service Records at http://www.met.police.uk/history/records.htm
* 'London Police in the 1880s' by John Wilkes. Copy at google books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OOw...ed=0CFkQ6AEwCg
* The Pitt Novels by Anne Perry are well researched and cover the London Police force from the 1880s

Diaries and letters original documents - some online
http://www.pikle.demon.co.uk/diaryjunction.html
Alexander Street Press's British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries.
http://www.pepysdiary.com/
This site is run by an enthusiast, lots of surrounding information re Restoration England.
Diary of Gertrude Savile 1728
http://twitter.com/#!/GertrudeSavile
Paston Letters edited by Norman Davis
http://www.worldcat.org/title/paston...ts/oclc/159225
Lisle Letters, edited by Muriel St Clare Byrne
http://www.worldcat.org/title/lisle-...s/oclc/6086809
Oxinden Letters, edited by Dorothy Gardiner
http://www.worldcat.org/title/oxinde...e/oclc/1150905


Games and Pastimes
http://www.davidparlett.co.uk/histocs/index.html rules for old games
http://www.pagat.com/ the rules for old and modern games

Clothes and Costumes
http://www.costumesocietyamerica.com/contact.htm
*'Mediaeval costume and life; review of their social aspects arranged under various classes and workers with instructions for making numerous types of dress' by Dorothy Hartley
*'English costume of the early Middle Ages: the tenth to the thirteenth centuries' by Iris Brooke
*'Handbook of English mediaeval costume' by C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington; with illustrations by Barbara Phillipson and Catherine Lucas
The Willett Cunnington books cover Costume from the 8thC to the 20thC and are worth having, particularly their 'History of Underclothes'.
*'Mediaeval costume and life; review of their social aspects arranged under various classes and workers with instructions for making numerous types of dress' by Dorothy Hartley
*'English costume from the early Middle Ages through the sixteenth century' by Iris Brooke
*'Medieval Costume and Fashion' by Herbert Norris
*'Racinet's full-color pictorial history of western costume : with 92 plates showing over 950 authentic costumes from the Middle Ages to 1800' by A. Racinet
*'The common man through the centuries; a book of costume drawings' by Max Barsis
http://www.marquise.de/en/index.html Costume and clothes.
* 'Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince' by Stella Mary Newton
* 'Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and
15th Centuries' by Mary Houston.
* 'The Medieval Tailor's Assistant' by Sarah Thursfield
http://www.costumes.org - dress in all historical periods.
* 'Corsets' Historical patterns and techniques' by Jill Salen
Covers corsets from 1780 -1910.
* 'Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail' by Lucy Johnson -Wonderful photos and details of the V&A Museum collection. The V and A do their own publications using their own collection for marvellous photographic details, and cover things like shoes, bags, corsets. Their books are worth seeking out.
* 'The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914' by Jane Ashelford, published by the National Trust using their collections. Stunning social detail and historical background, details of great use to a writer.
* 'Who Wore What?: Women's Wear 1861-1865' [Hardcover]
Juanita Leisch (Author) photos

Medical Sources
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA2...=0&output=html
* 'The Mysteries of Opium Revealed'
http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA2...=0&output=html
* 'Boerhaave's Aphorisms, Concerning the Knowledge and Cure of Diseases, 1715.'
Both books of use for those interested in the medical and non-medical uses of opium in the 17th, 18th and 19th Cs.
* Culpepper's Herbal
Buy a copy or find one on line. This was the medical bible for centuries (17thC onwards.)
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/h/hemloc18.html This url is set for Hemlock but the website is full of useful herbal information.
* 'Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon' by Piers D. Mitchell
Interesting new ideas on some old historical ideas about medicine.
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/66/113/frameset.html
A complete online herbal
http://www.mum.org/
An odd site devoted to menstruation but there is a good historical section and some interesting facts!

Myth and Folklore
Celtic fairy and 'other world' legends

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm#fairies
http://www.geocities.com/hairy_meg/fbib/online.html
* Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
By William Butler Yeats
* The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
By W. Y. Evans-Wentz
* British Goblins
By Wirt Sikes
*The Fairy Mythology
By Thomas Keightley, W H Brooke
All available on at google books
* Encylopedia of Fairies and the Fairies in Tradition and Literature by K Briggs
*Field Guide to the Little People by N Arrowsmith
* Troublesome Things by D Purkiss
*The Good People by P Narvaez
For quick reference the fairy enclyclopedias by Franklin and Rose
* 'The Encyclopedia of Spirits: the Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods, and Goddesses' by Judika Illes - a comprehensive listing of just about every spirit from just about every culture

TRANSPORT
Trains
http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/home.asp
This is the British Railway Museum. The Research section will answer e-mail queries.

Sailing Ships
Calculating ship speeds and time to travel
http://e-ships.net/dist.htm
http://ladywashington.org
http://immigrantships.net/v2/1600v2/1600indexv2.html
*'Sailing Ships in words and pictures' by Björn Landström
http://sailing-ships.oktett.net/square-rigging.html - details of square rig sailing.
*'The History of Ships' by by Björn Landström
Any book on ships by by Björn Landström will have detailed drawings.
http://www.captaincooksociety.com/ccsu41144.htm#REF2
excellent for sailing ships
http://kentishknock.com/greatshi.shtml
an enthusiast's site.
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/
The British Maritime museum.
http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/acs/sit...geid=12954&e=e
Lancashire Maritime museum - coastal fishing smacks and shrimpers.
* 'The Command of the Ocean' by N.A.M. Rodger
Excellent look at the British Navy from 1649 -1815. Rodger worked at the National Maritime Museum
http://[email protected]
It hosts a collection of files which contain material on sailing ships and steamships and lots of related subjects.
http://www.regia.org/ships/Ships2.htm Details on Viking ships.
http://www.marmuseum.ca/marhst.html
maritime museum source
http://library.mysticseaport.org/home.cfm
British navy
http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/index.htm


Weapons
http://www.royalarmouries.org
The British Royal collection of weapons and armour from around the world, fantastic resource and experts will answer questions.
Swords
*By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen.
These urls come from our resident sword experts.
http://www.historicalweapons.com/swo...rminology.html
http://www.aemma.org/
http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources...i/contents.htm
http://www.schielhau.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_sword
http://www.thearma.org/
http://www.swordforum.com/

Sites show weapons and their use.
http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources.../section8.html
daggers versus swords etc with pictures
* 'Classical Weaponry of Japan.' by Serge Mol.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/...ad.php?t=17889
sword versus quarter staff discussion.
http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/ (scroll down to Western Martial Arts or you'll be stuck in karate talk all day )
http://www.martialartsplanet.com/for...c/31692-1.html (silver’s quarterstaff chat)
http://www.stoccata.org/ (Aussies getting into the mix w/ Stoccata school of defense)
www.thearma.org (European historical combat training)
http://www.aemma.org/ (European historical combat training)
http://www.oakeshott.org/ (study of medieval weaponry)
www.netsword.com (sword and medieval weapons & tactics forums)
www.swordforum.com (my local hangout- like netsword but more members)
http://www.myarmoury.com/home.php (armour forums)
http://www.ehcg.net/ (historical combat guild)
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/scholagladiatoria/ (UK based Gladiators)
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~wew/rapier.htm (rapier defense)
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/a/armsarmor.html (basic info page)
http://arsgladii.com/about.html (small fighting school)
Whole armies - or at least large units - were armed with staffs, albiet modified ones with axe heads, spikes etc: poleaxes!
http://www.scholasolis.com/Poleaxe/poleaxe_intro.htm
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...tory-Resources
war games but useful for tactics.

Guns
http://www.kismeta.com/diGrasse/PolishFirearms.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm

Rifles
http://www.elverumske.no/esc_english/weapon_eng.htm

Muskets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_bess
http://www.elverumske.no/esc_english/weapon_eng.htm
http://www.jaegerkorps.org/neumanNRA.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm

Weather
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climateresearch.html
US and SE Asia weather records
http://booty.org.uk/UK weather from BC to 20thC AD.
http://www.oldweather.org/how_to_take_part
This is a collection of weather reports from RN ships during WWI.

BY COUNTRY
Algeria
http://www.algeria.com/forums/history-histoire/
Algeria forum fro general information
* 'The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole and Lieut. J. D. Jerrold Kelley
http://casbah-algeria.blogspot.com/
Algerian history through its buildings

Australia
Colonial Land and Emigration Commission
The Emigration of Irish Women in the Nineteenth Century: An Annotated Bibliography http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudi...9c-irish-women
* 'Irish Women in Colonial Australia'
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=...age&q=&f=false
For General information try the Australian National Archives
http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topic...n/transp1.html

China
* 'The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds' by Jonathan Spence.
* 'The Genius of China : 3,000 years of Science, Discovery, and Invention' by Robert Temple - really useful history of everything from civil engineering to lacquer to metallurgy
Titles in Imperial China


France
*Natalie Zemon Davis - "Society and Culture in Early Modern France"
http://gallica.bnf.fr/
Collection of 688,441 documents, which you can access in English. User friendly site with lots of help for searching.
*"Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris" By Barbar Diefendorf.
http://www.maisonstclaire.org/timeline/1351.html Hundred Years' War timeline
* 'The Man Who Would Be King: The Life of Philippe d'Orléans, Regent of France' by Christine Pevitt
* Saint Simon memoirs at Guttenburg.com
* 'Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne' by Pierre Riche

Germany - the modern state
www.pharus.eu
http://www.alt-berlin.info/pages/index.htm maps of Berlin

India
A rough guide to Kushan history
Ancient Indian costume
* 'The Story of India' by Michael Wood.
Brief for the vast subject, but well written and a fascinating introduction to the whole spectrum of Indian history.
* 'The Mughal Throne' by Abraham Eraly.
The entire history of the Mughal empire up to the takeover by Britain.
* 'White Mughals' by William Dalrymple.
Specifically about Englishmen in the colonial period, who adapted to Indian ways, turned Hindu or Muslim, and took Indian wives or mistresses.

Ireland
http://www.bartleby.com/65/pe/PenalLaw.html
* 'Peig: The Autobiography of Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket Island' (Irish Studies) (Paperback)
by Peig Sayers (Author), Bryan MacMahon (Translator)
http://www.libraryireland.com/JoyceHistory/PartV.php
* 'Twenty Years A-Growing' by Maurice O'Sullivan
http://www.shannonheritage.com/Attra...VillageStreet/
* 'Jack's World: Farming on the Sheep's Head Peninsula, 1920-2003' by Sean Sheehan (Author), Ciaran Watson (Illustrator), Danny Gralton (Illustrator)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/?tag=absowrit-21 'Man of Aran' now a DVD but originally a documentary made in 1934 about Irish life on the remote Aran islands.
* 'Dinneen's Irish Dictionary' it has the older forms of "classical Irish," from c. 1200-1700s.
http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=65731 Details of turn of the 19thC film of Ireland. Useful pictures.
* 'The Macmillan Atlas of Irish History' edited by Sean Duffy.
Good general introduction to Irish history.

Italy
* ‘The Renaissance in Italy by John Addington Symonds’
* ‘Daily Life in Renaissance Italy by Elizabeth and Thomas Cohen’
* ‘The Towns of Italy in the Late Middle Ages by by Trevor Dean’
* ‘Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy by Trevor Dean’
* 'The Italian Renaissance Interior 1400 -1600' by Peter Thornton.
* 'The Cardinal's Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince' by Mary Hollingworth.


Japan
* 'Samurai An Illustrated History' by Mitsuko Kure, Tuttle Publishing USA and Japan.
* ‘Confessions of a Yakuza’ by John Bester (translator) and Junichi Saga. ISBN: 4-7700-1948-3.
pre-WWII details.
* 'Nihongi' for Japanese History.
Somewhat between myth and fact. Good for constructing a Kings list and Shinto beliefs. Nihongi is currently translated in Public Domain and can be found online for free. Nihongi and Kojiki can also be found here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/

Korea
* 'Samguk Yusa' by Ilyon A Korean Historical document that's somewhat between history and myth covering the Three Kingdoms Period.
* 'Hanbok: Korean Clothing' by Sunny Yang
* An article on Onggi.
http://www.lovethatkimchi.com/Kimchi_Pots/Onggi.html
Korean Food:
http://www.maangchi.com
* 'Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen' by Hisoo Shin Hepinstall (better for the upper class Korean food.)
For language questions: KoreanClass101.com
* 'Tales of a Korean Grandmother' (for Korean folktales)
Joseon Royal Court Culture: Ceremonial and Daily Life by Shin, Myung-ho
Korean Shamanism - Muism by Tae-kon Kim
Kut: Korean Shamanist Rituals by Halla Pai Huhm


The Netherlands
'The Dutch Republic' by Jonathan Israel
* 'The Embarassment of Riches' by Simon Schama
* 'Rembrandt's Eyes' by Simon Schama

Scotland
http://www.scottishhistory.com/artic...ffs_page1.html
* 'Women in Scotland 1100-1750 '
Edited by Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M. Meikle
Tuckwell Press 1999 ISBN 1 86232 046 2
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STE...S/contents.htm, the reference to shires is in Book II, line 515)
*Dictionary of the Scots Language might help.
http://www.belhelvie.org.uk/history/medieval.htm
Historical Broadsides (Scotland)
* 'Broths to Bannocks: Cooking in Scotland 1690 to the present day' by Catherine Brown A superb socila history with recipes. Great for getting details.

Spain
*Joseph O'Callaghan - "History of Medieval Spain" - one of those very dense, but ridiculously informative works.
*Richard Fletcher - "The Quest for El-Cid"
*'DAILY LIFE IN SPAIN in the Golden Age', Marcel Defourneaux
*'IMPERIAL SPAIN, 1496-1716,' J.H. Elliott
*'OLIVARES' by J.H. Eliott
*'A HISTORY OF THE MARRANOS' by Cecil Roth
*'SECRECY AND DECEIT' by David M. Gitlitz
*'THE SPANISH INQUISITION' by Henry Kaplan
*'FROM SPANISH COURT TO ITALIAN GHETTO' by Yosef Haim Yerushalmi
*'The Spaniards: an Introduction to their History'
*'The Structure of Spanish History.'

North America
Important Events of the Century: Containing Historical and Important Events During the Last Hundred Years
These resources focus on the Great Lakes/Old Northwest region, early European (primarily French) exploration of Canada/US and contact with the native tribes, the fur trade, Pontiac's rebellion, the Jesuits, Algonquin and Iroquoian tribes. The following sites offer information on such topics. Some of the sites, such as Archive.org, offer broader information on other topics, but there are lots of historic/antiquated texts should one search for them.

University of Michigan Digital Texts Library: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx/
Cornell University Library's version of Making of America (might be the same as the above version): http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/
Online Collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/collections.asp
Indian Country Wisconsin: http://www.mpm.edu/wirp/ Emphasis on "kindergarten through grade 12 instruction in culture, history, sovereignty, and treaty rights of Wisconsin Indian tribes."
First Nations tribal histories and information: http://www.dickshovel.com/ In particular http://www.dickshovel.com/up.html the information available pertains to Northeast tribes).
Internet Archive Americana Libraries: http://www.archive.org/details/americana
Ohio Historical Society: http://www.ohiohistory.org/ Includes access to the "Ohio History" magazine online.
White Oak Society of Deer River, Minnesota: http://www.whiteoak.org/index.shtml This is "a non-profit organization providing living history interpretations of the fur trade era within the Great Lakes region."
The Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ Features a section on the Upper Midwest.
Internet Archive Canadian Libraries: http://www.archive.org/details/toronto
Early Canadiana Online: http://www.canadiana.org/eco.php (also available in French) Featuring "works published from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century."
Library & Archives of Canada: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/index-e.html "Canada's national collection of books, historical documents, government records, photos, films, maps, music...and more."
Canada's Digital Collections alphabetical index: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/205/301...E/Alphabet.asp
Canada History: http://www.canadahistory.com/
Our Roots Canadian history: http://www.ourroots.ca/e/index.aspx
The Champlain Society: http://www.champlainsociety.ca/ Featuring "four centuries of adventure, travel, social change, economic growth, and nation building."
Northwestern University Library's Digital Library Collections: http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/
1st-Hand-History.org: http://www.1st-hand-history.org/index.htm Featuring "Written accounts from the 1700s and 1800s."
The "Jesuit Relations" online: http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/relations/ Filled with much information about early French contact with native tribes and such.


BY ERA
Ancient History
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ahob/index_2.html The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain website for the 1st 5 yr project.
‘Homo britannicus’ by Chris Stringer Book summing up the findings of the AHOB 1 project.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ahob/index_2.html The next five year project - AHOB2

BABYLON and ASSYRIA
* 'Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria by Georges Contenau
* 'Babylon' by Joan Oates.

The Persian Empire
* JM Cook's The Persian Empire,
* A. T. Olmstead's History of the Persian Empire,
www.Pothos.org a discussion group of experts.
* Herodotus,
* Xenophon (though be wary of Xenophon's Cyropaedia -- he transposed a Spartan upbringing on poor Cyrus).
* Plutarch wrote a bio of Artaxerxes II.
www.livius.org.
Diodorus Siculus
Perseus Digital library may contain the above texts in translation.
www.perseus.tufts.edu
The University of Cambridge 'Ancient History'

Ancient Egypt
http://www.crystalinks.com/palermostone.html
http://www.egyptologyonline.com/manetho.htm
http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/abydoskl.html
* 'Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs' by Barbara Mertz, William Morrow imprint, Harper Collins, ISBN: 978-0-06-125276-1
http://touregypt.net/egyptantiquities/
*Joyce Tyldesley 'Judgment of the Pharaoh', a text about law.
http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/timeli...sportation.htm

Sparta
http://www.spartan-world.de/
*'Sparta', edited by Michael Whitby Published by Routeledge, New York.
*Plutarch 'On Sparta' from Penguin Classics.
*'Spartan Women' by Sarah B. Pomeroy

Stonehenge
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6311939.stm
*Sarum: The Novel of England (Paperback)
by Edward Rutherfurd (Author)
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/home/
Robert Drews - "The End of the Bronze Age"

The Celts
Professor Barry Cunliffe
Professor of European Archaeology website with list of his books. http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/resources/s...barry_cunliffe
http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/urls/lists.html
ListServes, Mailing Lists, and Discussion Groups on matters Celtic.
Celtic arts data base at the British Museum

Classical History
The Romans
http://www.roman-britain.org/main.htm
* 'Hannibal's War' by J.F. Lazenby.
http://www.livius.org
* 'Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families' by Friedrich Munzer.
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/
* 'The Fall of the Roman Empire' by Peter Heather
http://www.romanarmy.com/cms/
* 'The Culture of the Roman Plebs' by Nicholas Horsfall
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ classical
*Peter Stein - 'Roman Law in European Legal History'
*Adrian Goldsworthy - "The Punic Wars"
*Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
*'Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity' by Sarah Pomeroy.
* 'The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians' by Peter Heather
* 'Rome's Gothic Wars' by Michael Kulikowski
* 'The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians' by J.B. Bury
* 'History of the Goths' by Herwig Wolfram
* 'Roman Military Equipment: From the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome' by M.C. Bishop

The End of Roman and Post Roman Britain
* 'Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070'
by Robin Fleming, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2010
ISBN: 9780713990645
* 'The Ending of Roman Britain' by Esmonde Cleary A.S.,New York: Routledge, 1989.
* 'The End of Roman Britain' by Jones, Michael E. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996.


The Greeks
http://www.crystalinks.com/greece.html
* 'Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece' by Lesley Adkins and Roy A Adkins. Oxford University Press
http://www.scienceblog.com/community...199701827.html
* 'Greek and Latin Letters: An Anthology with translation' edited by Michael Trapp
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/hisar/people/jw/
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5021.html
http://www.ashmolean.museum/ash/faqs/q004/

The Vikings
http://www.intercollege.se/viking/my...y2/index2.html
http://www.rosala-viking-centre.com/history.htm
http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/
*'A History of the Vikings'. (Oxford Monographs in International Law) Gwyn Jones
*'The Vikings' (Penguin History) Else Roesdahl
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/
http://www.regia.org/ships/Ships2.htm Viking ships.


Mediaeval History
* ' The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century' (Paperback)
by Ian Mortimer. A good basic book for beginners to learn about the 14thC
http://www.medievalcookery.com/
excellent source for food and recipes.
* 'The Book of the Knight of the Tower: Manners for young medieval women' by Rebecca Barnhouse 2006
Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 1 4039 6991 4
http://www.uwm.edu/~carlin/ Hunt down the site for a long list of resources.
*'Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England', 1570-1640 (Past and Present Publications) (Paperback) by Martin Ingram (Author)
* 'Sex , Love and Relationships: The Medieval Idea of Marriage' by Christopher Brooke
Oxford University Press 1991 edition ISBN 0 19 285239 6
* 'Handbook of Medieval Sexuality' Edited by Vern.L.. Bullough and James. A. Brundage
Garland 1996 ISBN 0 8153 3662 4
* 'Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others' by Ruth Mazo
Karras
Routledge 2005 ISBN 9780415 289634
* 'Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook' edited by Conor McCarthy
Routledge 2004 ISBN 0 415 30746-5
* 'Women in Anglos-Saxon England' by Christine Fell
http://www.maisonstclaire.org/timeline/1351.html Hundred Years War time line.
*Joseph & Francis Gies - "Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages"
http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/towns.html useful site with excellent details of some towns
*'Medieval Women: a Sourcebook' by Emilie Amt
*'Life in a Medieval Castle', Joseph & Frances Gies
http://www.worldjousting.com/ a site for information about jousting.
*'Life in a Medieval Village', Joseph & Frances Gies
*'Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages' Joseph & Frances Gies
* 'The Structures of Everyday Life' by Fernand Braudel
http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/Technology.html look here to see how things worked for your trades and crafts people.
*'The Medieval Traveller' by Norbert Ohler
* Original document: The Paston Letters. They can be found on several sites or bought in book form.
* 'The Lady in Medieval England 1000-1500' by Peter Coss
Sutton 1998 ISBN 0 75090802 5
* 'English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages' by Jennifer.C. Ward
Longman 1992 ISBN 0 582 05966 6
* 'Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth Century Anglo Norman Realm' by Susan M. Johns
Manchester University Press 2003 ISBN 07190 6305 1
* 'Common Women: Prostitution And Sexuality in Medieval England' by Ruth Mazo
Karras Oxford University Press 1996 ISBN 0 19 506242 6
* 'Medieval Women Social History of Women in England 450-1500' by Henrietta Leyser.
* 'Memoirs of A Medieval Woman: The Life And Times Of Margery Kempe' by Louise
Collis Harper & Row 1983 edition ISBN 0 06 090992 7
http://www.larsdatter.com/index.html
http://gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html
Both sites offer details on baths and bathing pre 17thC
* 'Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince' by Stella Mary Newton
* 'Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries' by Mary Houston.
* 'The Medieval Tailor's Assistant' by Sarah Thursfield
* 'Medieval Costume and Fashions' by Herbert Norris
* 'The Medieval Traveller' by Ohler and Hillier.
* Routledge Press, 'Medieval Trade, Travel, and Exploration: An Encyclopedia'
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/2210bib.htm
Professor John Munro at the University of Toronto on Mediaeval Trade
http://www.netserf.org/ list of other sites
http://the-orb.net/ University site with info
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html Another useful university site.
http://www.deremilitari.org/ Another scholarly site looking at matters military
http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/soldier/database/
The Soldier in later Medieval England, the official lists of the soldiers and knights, Agincourt archers listed here.
* 'War and chivalry: the conduct and perception of war in England and Normandy' by Matthew Strickland and available on google books.
* 'The Medieval Underworld' by Andrew McCall - explains how the 'unsavory' sections of society (gays, prostitutes, bandits to name a few) fared in medieval Europe

17th Century England
Map of London
http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/
* The 17thC A-Z of London at the Guildhall Library
Londinopolis, an historicall discourse or perlustration of the city of London by James Howell pub 1657
lists every main street and building in London.
* 'The Weaker Vessel - Woman's Lot in the 17thC' by Antonia Fraser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_(ship)
* 'The Making of the English Middle Class, 1660-1730' by Peter Earle
Helpful info about business women in London.
http://immigrantships.net/v2/1600v2/1600indexv2.html
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/engli...r/lamphome.htm
*BBC DVDs 'Tales from the Green Valley'
Four practical archaeologists spent one year living and working on a 1620s farm. Everything was authentic, clothes, food, way of life. If you want to understand what Stewart England/Wales was like for the majority of people you should study this DVD.
*'Her Own Life' autobiographical writings by 17thC women' edited by Elspeth Graham, Hilary Hinds, Elaine Hobby and Helen Wilcox.
*'Women's Writing in Stuart England' edited by Sylvia Brown
The Rags of Time list of 17th century resources

17th Century - The (U.K.) Civil Wars
http://www.lukehistory.com/resources/index.html
original ballads and pamphlets.
*'Behemoth or The Long Parliament' (Paperback) by Thomas Hobbes
*'Cromwell' by Antonia Fraser
*'The King's Peace 1637-41', 'The King's War 1641-1647' and 'The Trial of Charles I' by C.V. Wedgewood
*Tristram Hunt 'The English Civil War at First Hand'
*'The Grand Quarrel' Women's Memoirs of the English Civil War' edited by Roger Hudson.

18th Century
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/history.html
*The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh
http://www.oldlondonmaps.com
Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster, 1792 – 1799
*Gale's Eighteenth Century Collections Online
* University Life in Eighteenth-Century Oxford by Graham Midgley, Yale University Press
http://www.pepysdiary.com/ run by an enthusiast. Has much background info like weather and temps and general info re each day's happenings.
* 'Dr Johnson's London' by Liza Picard
http://www.18thcenturyhistory.com/
* 'The Making of the English Middle Class, 1660-1730' by Peter Earle
Helpful info about business women in London.
http://twitter.com/The18thCentury
18thC Blog
http://theragsoftime.blogspot.com/
* ‘England 1700: Scenes from London Life’ by Maureen Waller
* ‘The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England’ by John Styles ‘Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England’
* ‘English Society in the Eighteenth Century’ by Roy Porter


The American Revolution
http://www.history.org/
Colonial Williamsburg
* 'The Most Dangerous Man in America'
* 'The Diplomacy of the American Revolution'
http://research.history.org/Digital_History_Center.cfm
* 'Common Sense' by Thomas Paine
* 'Liberty' by Thomas Fleming
http://www.mountvernon.org/ Washington's home.
* '1776' by David McCullough
http://www.jamesriverplantations.org/
* 'Autobiography' of Ben Franklin
* 'REDCOATS AND REBELS The American Revolution Through British Eyes' by Christopher Hibbert
* 'The Glorious Cause' by Robert Middlekauff
http://www.monticello.org/ Jefferson's home.
‘Marines in the Revolution: A History of the Continental Marines in the American Revolution 1775-1783' by Charles R. Smith.
* 'That's Not in My American History Book' by Thomas Ayres - US history from the 1700s through the 1900s
http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/collections.html
Colonial Williamsburg: http://www.history.org/history/
Claude Moore Colonial Farm:
http://www.1771.org
*'Rise to Rebellion' by Jeff Shaara - fiction.
Non-fiction resources might include: James Nelson's Washington's Secret Navy, George Washington's Great Gamble, Benedict Arnold's Navy and With Fire and Sword; David McCullough's 1776; Arthur B. Tourtellot's Lexington and Concord: The Beginning of the war of the American Revolution--though he makes suppositions and conclusions only supported by British documentation; Thomas B. Allen's Tories: Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War; Paul Lockhart's The Whites of their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington; Scoop on Clothes, Homes and Daily Life in Colonial America by Elizabeth Raum; Alan Taylor's American Colonies: The Settling of North America; Ruth Dean's Life in the American Colonies; Women Soldiers, Spies and Patriots of the American Revolution by Martha Knieb; The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson; The Female Soldier in the War of the Revolution. Deborah Sampson was the first known woman to impersonate a man to join the army and combat. Hands down, the Single Most Valuable source of information in my research has been The Naval Documents of the American Revolution. The NDAR is a collection of the decisions made to build the Continental Navy and Marines, records of the orders given and what changes were made. There is a goldmine of detail, such as stores, rosters, dress, poor medical treatments, uniforms, desertions, etc. Then, it switches to corresponding British documents. These should be available at your local library, but I hunted down some to purchase for my own.


Regency
*'What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew' by Daniel Pool
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs
2 million 19thC regional and national daily and weekly newspapers on line.
*'Georgette Heyer’s Regency World' by Jennifer Kloester
http://www.georgianindex.net/
Very useful with lists and other resources.
*'An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England' by Venetia Murray
*'The Regency Underworld' by Donald A. Low
*'The A to Z of Regency London'
*The Connoisseur Period Guides: Late Georgian 1760-1810
*The Connoisseur Period Guides: The Regency Period 1810-1830
*Jane Austen Centre Magazine
*A Regency Lexicon
*A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811 edition of the slang dictionary--invaluable for Regency writers)
*New Plays on the London Stage 1700-1810 (when your characters go to the theater, what do they see?)
*The Festival of Love (drinking songs, published 1812) More songbooks from the same site
*Search Georgian-Era Bath Newspapers Abstracts and excerpts, not full text, but a lot of valuable info nonetheless. When searching, make sure you press the green Search button, because Enter is linked to a different search on the page.
* Internet Library of Early Journals (18th and 19th century)
* 'Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy' by Ian Kelly
* 'Voices from the World of Jane Austen' by Malcolm Day
Excellent source of real people's comments about all manner of subjects. Useful for dialogue.

US Colonial History
Colonial Americahttp://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/
*American Artisans: Crafting Society Identity, 1750-1850 (Paperback) by Howard B. Rock (Editor), Paul A. Gilje (Editor), Robert Asher
*'Everyday Life In Colonial America From 1607-1783 '
by Dale Taylor, one of The Writer's Guide To Everday Life series from Writer's Digest Books.
*'Women's Life and Work in the Southern Colonies', by Julia Cherry Spruill.
*"Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
*"Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier" by Joanna Stratton.
*"The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America" by John Demos.
http://research.history.org/Digital_History_Center.cfm
* 'Cities in Revolt: urban life in America, 1743-1776' by Carl Bridenbaugh.
http://www.history.org/
http://www.jamesriverplantations.org/
http://www.monticello.org/
http://www.mountvernon.org/

19thC US History
*Thomas J. Schlereth Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915
http://www.city-data.com/
data from numerous sources to create complete and interesting profiles of U.S. cities, include photos.
*'Everyday Life' series are good. I also have 'The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840' and 'The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876.'
*Historical Broadsides (U.S.)
* Fanny Farmer's Cook book
http://edwardianpromenade.wordpress.com/ general information at this author's blog and some good links.
* 'Grappling with Death: The Union Second Corps Hospital at Gettysburg' by Roland R. Maust
http://www.gdg.org/Research/Authored Items/maust.html
Here is a great site which helped me research the weapons for my Gettysburg story.
* ‘Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West’ by Marcia Hensley, published by High Plains Press.
* ‘ Letters of a Woman Homesteader’ by Elinore Pruitt Stewart.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/webguns.htm
Here's another site for weapons:
http://www.civilwarhome.com/weapons.htm
More weapons/tactics stuff:
http://www.gdg.org/Research/Other ...w/prologue.htm
Here's some more Civil War medicine info:
http://www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicineintro.htm

19th Century Britain: Victorian
http://www.britishempire.co.uk/timeline/19century.htm time line for the 19thC
* 'The Victorians' by A.N. Wilson.
A good general overview of the period with many illustrations and excellent bibliography for further research.
http://www.channel4.com/history/micr...19/part05.html
Good general introduction to the era.
* 'The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy by David Cannadine - a thorough piece of research using excellent resources. Part of the Penguin History Series.
http://victorianresearch.org/
* 'London Labour and the London Poor' by Henry Mayhew (Penguin Classics) (Paperback) the condensed version. Or google books has the full four volumes.
* Clubs and Club Life in London By John Timbs available on Google Books as PDF
http://www.victorianlondon.org/
dictionary of Victorian London Superb.
*Available as a book. 'A Dictionary of Victorian London: An A-Z of the Great Metropolis' (Anthem Nineteenth Century Studies) by Lee Jackson
http://www.victorianstation.com/queen.html Life and times of the Queen
* The Clubs of London By Charles Marsh available on Google Books as PDF
http://www.abcounties.co.uk/index.htm The counties of England as in Victoria's time.
*Judith Flanders 'The Victorian House' (Highly recommended) Good information about servants' work as well as the mistress.
* 'Consuming Passions' by Judith Flanders - makes you think again about Victorians.
http://www.victorianweb.org - a reasonably well moderated site with some good resources.http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/200...-in-state.html
This blog gives details of Edwardian and Victorian recipes and dinner menus.
*'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley
http://www.mrsbeeton.com/
Mrs Beeton's housekeeping and cookery book. Excellent site with comments etc. Most helpful.
*'Water in England' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Crafts in England' or 'English Country Crafts' by Dorothy Hartley
*'Bread' by Elizabeth Davies
*Reproductions of Cookery books by Mrs. Eliza Acton and Mrs Isabella Beeton are invaluable for household details and management of servants.
Mrs Beeton on line at: http://www.mrsbeeton.com
*BBC DVDs: 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden', 'The Victorian Kitchen', The Victorian Flower Garden'.
This stunning series of programmes, filmed over a year, are a must for any historical writer who wants to avoid errors about Victorian servants, the Great House and its occupants, food, cooking, and what happened when. Using only Victorian equipment the cook and gardener, who had been working in the Great Houses all their lives, show how the garden and kitchen would have been run. Superb resource.
* 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden' by Jennifer Davies.
The book of the BBC series.
* 'The Victorian Kitchen' by Jennifer Davies.
The book of the BBC series. Excellent bibliography for further reading
* 'Period Piece' by Gwen Raverat - Darwin's granddaughter and the book is about her growing up within the family.
http://www.victoriana.com/library/Dressing/1858-62.htm
basic information about clothing
* 'Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail' by Lucy Johnson -Wonderful photos and details of the V&A Museum collection
http://www.fashion-era.com/undergarments.htm
Again basic information about clothing.
* 'Britannia's Daughters - Women of the British Empire' by Joanna Trollope. Solid research about women's contributions to the Empire. Excellent material for creating realistic non-conventional Victorian female characters.
* 'Other People's Daughters - the life and Times of the Governess' by Ruth Brandon - excellent source of original documents.
* 'The Governess - Letters from the Colonies 1862-1882' by Patricia Clarke. - more original documents.
* 'Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839-1939' by Margaret Forster.
Gives a detailed picture of how Victorian society treated women.
* 'The Victorian Household Album' compiled by Elizabeth Drury and Phillipa Lewis. A collection of pictures, adverts, illustrations etc.
* 'The Victorians and Sport' by Mike Huggins - excellent research and info about many no longer played sports or pastimes.
* 'Not in Front of the Servants' by Frank Victor Dawes. A National Trust book using National Trust records and original documents plus 700 letters. Covers the work, wages and duties of all household servants 1800 - 1940 and is an easy and enjoyable read.
* 'The Complete Servant' by Samuel and Sarah Adams, first published in 1825, my edition is the 1989 Southover Press`, ISBN 1 870962 03 6. Full details of who to employ, what they do and wages etc. invaluable.
* 'Tales of the Old Gardeners' by Jean Stone and Louise Brodie. Covers gardens and their workers from 1850-1950. Easy read, useful general information for adding 'artistic verisimilitude' in the form of little details.
* 'Victorian Farm' by Alex Langlands (Author), Peter Ginn (Author), Ruth Goodman (Author)
DVD of the same 'Victorian Farm' available from Amazon.
This is the BBC series where practical archaeologists lived and worked as Victorians on a Victorian farm for a year. Solid Research, a good source.
http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs
2 million 19thC regional and national daily and weekly newspapers on line.
* 'Victorian Do-It-Yourself - Handicrafts and Pastimes of the 1880s' by E.J. Wiseman
http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_new...7625464218629/
photos of the ‘criminals in Newcastle upon Tyne gaol 1871-1873 from the Tyne and Wear Museum
Tyne and Wear Museum photo library: http://www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/
* 'The Middle Class, A History' by Lawrence James.
readable and scholarly, excellent for understanding the Victorian middle class.
* 'The Shepherd's Life' by W.H. Hudson
A remarkable collection of interviews with a Downland shepherd about his life and work. 1st published in 1910.
* 'Victorian London, The Life of a City 1840-1870', by Liza Picard, 2005
The Rags of Time list of 19th century resources

Asia in the 19th century

Afghanistan: The Great Game Revisited, British documentary
Anglo-Russian Rivalry in Central Asia 1810-1895 by Gerald Morgan
Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa by Sven Hedin
The Defence of India, Gen. Sir Charles MacGregor
Eighteen Years in the Khyber 1879-1898 by Sir Robert Warburton
Genom Khorasan och Turkestan: minnen från en resa i Centralasien 1890 och 1891 by Sven Hedin
Genom Persien, Mesopotamien och Kaukasien. Reseminnen by Sven Hedin
The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia by Peter Hopkirk - (R)
A Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan 1841 - 42 by Florentia Sale
Journey to the North of India through Russia, Persia and Afghanistan by Arthur Conolly
On Afghanistan's Plains: The Story of Britain's Afghan Wars by Jules Stewart
Overland to India (Öfver land till Indien genom Persien, Seistan och Belutjistan) by Sven Hedin
Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924 by Seymour Becker
Travels in central Asia: being the account of a journey from Teheran across the Turkoman desert on the eastern shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand; performed in the year 1863 by Arminius Vambéry
Travels into Bokhara by Sir Alexander Burnes
The Rags of Time list of 19th century resources contains lots of sources on 19th century India


Imperial Germany, 1871-1914
Advertising empire: race and visual culture in imperial Germany David Ciarlo
Berlin and its environs; handbook for travellers, 1910 (Baedeker)
Colonialism, antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish descent in imperial Germany by Christian S. Davis
Cities, sin, and social reform in imperial Germany by Andrew Lees
Death in the Tiergarten: Murder and Criminal Justice in the Kaiser's Berlin by Benjamin Carter Hett
Dream of empire: the world of Germany in original photographs 1840-1914 by Franz Hubmann; ed. by J.M. Wheatcroft
The Entourage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888-1918 by Isabel V. Hull
Honor, Politics, and the Law in Imperial Germany, 1871–1914 by Ann Goldberg
Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871 - 1918 by Matthew Jefferies
Imperial Germany, 1871-1918, edited by James Retallack
Imperial Germany, 1871-1914: economy, society, culture and politics by V.R. Berghahn
Imperial Germany : a historiographical companion edited by Roger Chickering
Northern Germany as far as the Bavarian and Austrian frontiers: handbook for travellers
16th ed. 1913 (Karl Baedeker)
Lancers and dragoons : uniforms of the Imperial German cavalry 1900-1914 / by R. J. Marrion ; in collaboration with D.S.V. Fosten and D.H. Hagger
The Real German War Plan, 1904-14 by Zubler
Regulating the social: the welfare state and local politics in imperial Germany by George Steinmetz
Religion and civil society: Catholics, Jesuits, and Protestants in imperial Germany by Róisín Healy
The Rhine, including the Black Forest & the Vosges; handbook for travellers, 1911 (Baedeker)
Southern Germany (Wurtemberg and Bavaria); handbook for travellers, 1907 (Baedeker)
The surplus woman : unmarried in Imperial Germany, 1871/1918 by Catherine L. Dollard
The female victim : homicide and women in Imperial Germany Randolph E. Bergstrom, Eric A. Johnson The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 by Philipp Blom
Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: essays on cultural affinity, edited by Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwarth


Edwardian Britain
http://theoldfoodie.blogspot.com/200...-in-state.html
details here of recipes and menus.Read E.E. Nesbit's children's books: 'Five Children and It', 'The Would-be-Goods', 'The Phoenix and the Carpet' all written at and about the early 1900s. Excellent for voc and customs and telling details.

20th Century Sources
http://www.nrm.org.uk/home/home.asp
* 'Debs at War' by Anne de Courcy. If you want accurate details of Debutantes, The Season, Court Presentation, clothing, behaviour 1900-1939c this is the book. Impeccable research.
http://www.popcenter.org
popular culture sources
* 'The Country House Remembered' edited by Merlin Waterson
Dukes, Duchesses, Lords and Ladies remembering life in their stately homes. Excellent resource for attitudes, money, servants, how the days were organised.

Colonialism
*"The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism" by Ashis Nandy.
*"Culture and Imperialism" by Edward Said.
*'Orientalism' by Edward Said.
*'Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa' by Jean and John Comaroff.

WW1 The Great War/ The First World War
*'Fighting Pilots ' by Patrick Pringle
http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/battleverdun/index.htm Verdun
* Verdun 1916: 'They Shall Not Pass' (Campaign) (Paperback) by Ian Drury (Author), Howard Gerrard (Illustrator
http://www.oldweather.org/how_to_take_part
A collection of weather reports from RN ships during WWI
* The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (Paperback) by Sir Alistair Horne (Author)
* Verdun (Great Battles) (Hardcover) by David Mason (Author)
* German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870-1916 (Cambridge Military Histories) (Hardcover)
http://www.1914-1918.net/
A War In Words: The First World War in Diaries and Letters by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis
Brothers in War: One Family’s Ultimate Great War Sacrifice by Michael Walsh
Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, and Siegfreid Sassoon.
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. non-fiction. She was a VAD at the front. Graphic details.
The Edwardian Turn of Mind: First World War and English Culture by Samuel Hynes
Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-23 by Aviel Roshwald
First World War Poetry Archive
The Flight of "Big Horse": The Trail of War in Central Asia by Sven Hedin
For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts-Martial, 1914-1920 by Anthony Babington
Från Peking till Moskva by Sven Hedin
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918 by Roger Chickering Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
Mons, ANZAC & Kut by Aubrey Herbert
The National Army Museum Book of the Turkish Front 1914-18: The Campaigns at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and in Palestine by Michael Carver
On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire by Peter Hopkirk
Setting the East Ablaze: Lenins Dream of an Empire in Asia by Peter Hopkirk
Troublous Times: Experiences in Bolshevik Russia and Turkestan (Blandt krigsfanger i Turkestan: Oplevelser under Bolschevikrevolutionen i Rusland og i Centralasien) by Alf Harald Brun
Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Ageby Modris Eksteins
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence
T.E: Lawrence and Arabia, BBC documentary
The First World War, British Documentary in 14 parts
War Planning, 1914 by Richard F. Hamilton
When God Made Hell: The British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921 by Charles Townshend
Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson
The 2 million women left without men after the Great War (WWI), how the world treated them and how they survived.
http://www.1914-1918.net/maps.htm
excellent site cover the whole war and has maps.

The Second World War/ WWII

*"Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics" by Claudia Koonz.
http://www.ne-diary.bpears.org.uk/Bck/Popular.html
Very useful for what your MCs did in the1940s
*"The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by its Perpetrators and Bystanders" by Ernst Klee.
*"Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" By Daniel Goldhagen.
http://www.ne-diary.bpears.org.uk/Bck/Popular.html
*"Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II" by Stephen Fritz.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/
personal memories of WWII plus excellent historical comment.
* Debs at War' by Anne de Courcy. If you want details of Debutantes, The Season, Court Presentation etc this is the book. Impeccable research from personal accounts.
http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/
Imperial War Museum UK
http://www.combinedops.com/index.htm
A website devoted to WWII combine operations. British with excellent sources
http://www.dambusters.org.uk
WWII Dambusters website
 
Last edited:

Flicka

Dull Old Person
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 8, 2010
Messages
1,249
Reaction score
147
Location
Far North
Website
www.theragsoftime.com
Updated with the links above. Also added links to the 17th century and 19th century resource pages on my blog because there are hundreds of books and links there and the list above would become completely unwieldy if I added them all.
 

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian
Staff member
Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
16,877
Reaction score
5,196
Location
Near the gargoyles
Website
www.alessandrakelley.com

CWatts

down the rabbit hole of research...
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 4, 2013
Messages
1,756
Reaction score
1,235
Location
Virginia, USA
You may want to add this little gem to your blog for those researching 19th century U.S. history - "Important Events of the Century" published for the 1876 centennial exposition. https://books.google.com/books?id=OGZt1HGsgmEC

It goes year by year, often with now-obscure disasters and scandals for the later events. The ads alone are a great snapshot of Gilded Age urban life, esp. for those researching New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
 
Last edited:

snafu1056

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 18, 2013
Messages
819
Reaction score
88
Just stumbled upon the Dime Novel & Story paper database. Pretty comprehensive (and growing) list of dime novels & story papers of the 19th & 20th centuries

http://dimenovels.org/
 

autumnleaf

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2010
Messages
1,133
Reaction score
215
Location
small rainy island
Some good resources about piracy:
http://www.thepirateking.com/ Rob Ossian's Pirate Cove
A General History of the Pyrates by Daniel Defoe
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly
The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730 by Benerson Little
The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers and Rogues by George Choundas
Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th-Century Mediterranean by Adrian Tinniswood
Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age by Marcus Rediker
 
Last edited:
  • Love
Reactions: Elenitsa

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian
Staff member
Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
16,877
Reaction score
5,196
Location
Near the gargoyles
Website
www.alessandrakelley.com

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian
Staff member
Moderator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
16,877
Reaction score
5,196
Location
Near the gargoyles
Website
www.alessandrakelley.com
  • Like
Reactions: Lakey