Historical Research
I use a great many books to help me with my historical research and have listed some of my favourites here. They tend to be concerned with the more glamorous aspects of the past - clothes, furniture, carriages, homes etc - but some of them are concerned with the political or commercial aspects as well. The books are all very readable as well as informative and I hope you enjoy them.
The Regency Era
Jane Austen's Letters
Captain Gronow - His Reminisces of Regency and Victorian Life
Harriette Wilson's Memoirs
The Writings of William Cobbett
The Creevey Papers
Regency Recipes - Marie-Pierre Moine & Antonia Williams (available exclusively from the Brighton Pavilion)
John Nash's Views of the Royal Pavilion (a beautiful book reproducing Nash's original hand-coloured aquatints of the Pavilion through most of its stages of development)
Costume and Fashion - James Laver
Costume 1066-1990s - John Peacock
Fashion in the Western World - Doreen Yarwood
Our Tempestuous Day - Carolly Erickson
The Age of Elegance - Arthur Bryant
Jane Austen in Style - Susan Watkins
The Elgin Marbles - B. F. Cook
Classic Georgian Style - Henrietta Spencer-Churchill. This is a wonderful book crammed with colour photographs of Georgian dining rooms, halls, bedrooms, gardens etc. It's lovely to look through, and it's very informative about the style of the Georgian age. I adore it!
The Longman Companion to Napoleonic Europe - Clive Emsley
The Edwardian Era
King Edward VII at Marienbad - Sigmund Munz (an eyewitness account)
From My Private Diary - Daisy, Princess of Pless
Edwardians in Love - Leslie, Anita
The Importance of Being Edward, King in Waiting - Stanley Weintraub
Edward VII - George Plumptre
Edwardian Life and Leisure - Ronald Pearsall
The Edwardian Era - ed Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry
The English Country House Party - Phyllida Barstow
The Titanic
There are hundreds of books on the Titanic, and a proliferation of websites. For a comprehensive collection of contemporary accounts, I recommend:
The Mammoth Book of How it Happened: Titanic, Contemporary Accounts from Survivors and the World's Press - I wish I'd found this book sooner, as it gathers together a great deal of contemporary information in one handy volume.
Titanic Voices by A. Forsyth, D. Hyslop and S. Jemima.
For websites, I recommend:
It has an excellent bibligraphy, and I found a number of the books listed useful in my research.
I love biographies of famous people, and I also love to use contemporary fiction as a resource as it gives such an authentic insight into the period.
For useful research websites, see the Links page
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