Tudor History Lovers discussion

Just finished some wonderful books on the Plantagenets and Tudors and looking for some in-depth books to cover the next periods (guess Elizabethan, Restoration, then Victorian - any ideas? Looking to go all the way up to the start of WWI

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Following

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne by David Starkey
Last Jane Grey by Eric Ives
Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth, 1527-1608 by Mary S. Lovell
The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty by G.J. Meyer
Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen by Tracy Borman

What are you looking for? Monarch biographies, general histories of the period, social history?

More of a general history but happy to go super in-depth

Tudor/Renaissance:

The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women, by Elizabeth Norton
New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, by Susan Brigden
The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England, by Ian Mortimer
The Life of Elizabeth I, by Alison Weir (She has many other good biographies for the Tudor period, as well.)
Elizabeth's London, by Liza Picard
The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True History of the Spanish Armada, by Neil Hanson
The Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser
England Under the Tudors, by G.R. Elton

17th Century:
The Time Traveler's Guide to Restoration England, by Ian Mortimer
The Weaker Vessel, by Antonia Fraser
Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration, by Antonia Fraser
After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England by Leanda de Lisle
Restoration London: Everyday Life in the 1660s by Liza Picard
Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution by Lisa Jardine
The Splendid Century, by W.H. Lewis

18th Century:
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore
Dr. Johnson's London, by Liza Picard
Chasing Venus, by Andrea Wulf

19th Century:
The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs. Disraeli, by Richard Aldous
The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, by Judith Flanders
Dawn of the Belle Epoque, by Mary McAuliffe
Inside the Victorian Home, by Judith Flanders
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals, by Gillian Gill
Winston Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, by William Manchester
Eiffel's Tower and the World's Fair where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count, by Jill Jonnes
Victorian People and Ideas, by Richard Altick
The Rise of Respectable Society, by F.M.L. Thompson
Jane Austen's England, by Roy Adkins
Oscar Wilde: A Biography, by Richard Ellmann
Victorian London, by Liza Picard
The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830, by Paul Johnson

Early 20th Century:
The Edwardian Turn of Mind, by Samuel Hynes
The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman
The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman
Twilight of the Belle Epoque, by Mary McAuliffe
The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914, by Philipp Blom
The Strange Death of Liberal England, by George Dangerfield

Didn't include anything American, but I could if you like.

That makes for a very interesting list, Susanna, thank you for sharing this! I've read a few of them but not the majority by far so I'll be happy to pick in that list for my future reads!

I hope you enjoy them, then!

I'm sure I will!

Are there any good somewhat general histories along the lines of “The Plantagenets” and “War of the Roses?”

I don't believe Dan Jones has tackled the Tudors as yet. However, there are general histories out there, like Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. (Note: I haven't read this one, and Ackroyd is a novelist, not a historian.)

Susan Brigden's New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 covers the entire period.

For a more piecemeal approach, Alison Weir has covered the period from 1509-1603 pretty fully in her biographies The Six Wives of Henry VIII, The Children of Henry VIII ("The Children of England" if you're in the UK), and The Life of Elizabeth I.

Awesome thanks so much and I’ll check Alison out: just hoping I can find something compatible for the subsequent periods. Let me know if you know of anything!

There are multi-volume histories of Britain, some of them very good.

Thanks. I heard Schama’s is good but there could be better ones I’m sure

New Worlds, Lost Worlds is part of the Penguin series. Ackroyd has later volumes than the Tudors (also an earlier one, I believe). There are options out there, of various degrees of "scholarlyness" vs. "popular." (The ideal to my mind is something that's scholarly but also quite readable.)

Peter Ackroyd has published four volumes in his History of England series. They are Foundation, Tudors, Civil War and Revolution which takes you up to 1815. His work is both scholarly (good references to sources provided) and readable covering both social and political aspects of English history.
The next book Dominion is due to be published in the UK today and takes the series from the Battle of Waterloo to the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.