The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England: From 1485-1649

Writer's Guides to Everyday Life

by Kathy Lynn Emerson

Writers will save hours of valuable research time and bring a richness and historical accuracy to their work as they reference the slice-of-life facts depicted for each of these major time periods. Each book contains descriptions of the period's food and clothes; customs and slang; occupations; common religious and political practices; and other historical details.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Writing, Renaissance, Reference, British Literature, 17th Century

280 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

aka Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Emerson, Kaitlyn Gorton

Kathy Lynn Emerson began writing as a child: a newspaper for her dolls and then a rambling adventure series featuring characters from all her favorite television shows. In addition to contemporary, historical and time-travel romance (some written under the pen-name of Kaitlyn Gorton) and historical novels written as Kate Emerson, Kathy has written children's books, non-fiction, short stories, and historical mysteries. She won the Agatha award for mystery nonfiction for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries. She also writes as Kaitlyn Dunnett.

Reviews

[Redsteve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good general book about life and society in the period (which, in this case, covers from Henry VII through Charles I). It's interesting to see the difference between books like this that are written for historians vs. reenactors vs. writers (which this book is directed towards), specifically, what is glossed over and what is dealt with in more depth. Parts of this book are VERY general, but it's got excllent sections on period disease/medicine and crime/justice (both of which are probably directed at those budding period mystery writers out there). There's also a good bit on period color terms (much more then the usual "goose turd green" and "Spaniard's blood". On the other hand, the section on clothing was extremely brief and the section on witchcraft/prognostication/supernatural seemed tacked on at the end as an afterthought.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful tool for anyone writing fiction set in Renaissance England, as it covers the small details of daily life that more scholarly works sometimes miss. It's a great manual and reference point for further study, however it is fairly general and should not be seen as a substitute for your own research.

[Benjamin Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books like these are often overlooked these days because, after all, writers can find anything they want to know via the internet. Right? I certainly conduct most of my research that way. But I find that I often end up going down various rabbit holes of research, discovering something interesting and then following links to other interesting things and the next thing I know, an entire hour (or more) has passed and I'm nowhere near the original subject I was looking for.

So that's one advantage of a book like this that focuses on one particular era and location of history. But even more important, I think is this: Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. And that makes it hard to focus the research. For example, in this book, if I wanted to know about how various crimes were dealt with, I can look that up, but find out a whole lot more about that single topic...which in turn leads to zeroing in on ideas for a story, without the information overload from a similar internet attempt.

As for this book, I found a lot of very interesting information about the real history of the period in Renaissance England from 1485-1649 (covering Henry VII through Charles I). I did find the coverage to be a bit inconsistent, meaning some subjects are covered in great detail while others were given a much more cursory treatment. But still, every tidbit of information in here is relevant to gaining a better understanding of that time and place, putting many generally accepted "facts" to rest and steering a researcher to the real deal.

I originally bought this book years ago and occasionally dipped into it for one project or another. But this time I decided to read it cover to cover. I am comfortable now in my overall impression of the setting but will still need to consult this book for details as the need arises.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

great for my Tudor book research.