I am curious whether anybody has looked at the free Google books that are available electronically. There are now free ereaders from Sony and Barnes & Noble.
Are there any Tudor nuggets here - history or fiction? I am even interested in reading "bad" history if it is culturally relevant to the time period it was written in.
I was happy to finally find Agnes Strickland who was a reference to many books I read as a child, but unavailable in our old library :-)
There are tons of books available on google books for the Tudor researcher. I've been using this service for a couple of years now. The most frustrating part is when you find a title you REALLY want to read but it's only available in snippet view (limited to a few snippets per access session).
ReplyDeleteYou mention the Strickland - which is also available on the Internet Archive, as well as several other collections of papers and letters. You have to search but then you can either read on line or download as a pdf - among other options.
http://www.archive.org/index.php
My google books library is fairly academic and so may make for some very dry reading but here are some of the titles I keep on my google books bookshelf:
The Manuscripts of the Duke of Rutland
Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth (Birch)
Reports on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Ancaster
Correspondence of King James VI with Sir Robert Cecil
Memoirs of the life and times of Sir Christopher Hatton
Memoirs of the court of Queen Elizabeth (Aiken)
Desiderata Curiosa hibernica (collection of papers/letters relating to Ireland)
The Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth (Nichols)
And 1 of the Calendar of State Papers Domestic from Elizabeth's reign although I now also have those as searchable PDFs from Tanner Ritchie's amazing Christmas sale this past year. ($10 Canadian/title downloaded)
Perhaps others can suggest some more accessible secondary material available from google books.
There are a lot of books that cover the Tudor period,Anne Boleyn,Henry VIII. There is even a limit preview of the new Linda Porter book about Mary 1-The First Queen of England:The myth of Bloody Mary,and Anne Boleyn by Joanna Denny. but they also have book in full view,like Anne Boleyn by Paul Friedmann. There are also limited preview of Alison Weir books, Eric Ives,and Even David Starkey.
ReplyDeleteI've also been downloading from both Google books and the Internet Archive for a while, mainly old collections of chronicles from the period.
ReplyDeleteHere are a few that I've collected:
The Chronicle of Calais in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII
Wriothesley's Chronicle
Hall's Chronicle
Chronicle of Queen Jane and Two Years of Queen Mary
Some of the Camden Society's "Miscellany" collections (with primary source materials that aren't long enough for their own books, so they were put together in these collections). There are some good inventories in those, such as Henry Fitzroy's.
And as KB mentioned, several collections of Letters and Papers.
I keep planning to do a page on the site with links to some of the best books in those collections, but like so many other things, I haven't gotten around to it yet. But when I do I'm sure I'll be asking you all for suggestions!