The most recommended 16th century books

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82 authors created a book list connected to 16th century, and here are their favorite 16th century books.
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Book cover of A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549

Peter Marshall Author Of Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation

From Peter's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Professor Historian Orcadian Long distance walker Norwegian learner

Peter's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Peter Marshall Why did Peter love this book?

We’re obsessed with the Tudors, but the ordinary people of sixteenth-century England are all too often left out of the picture.

Mark Stoyle’s book invites us to reconsider a dimly remembered moment in time when commoners demanded to be heard. In the summer of 1549, a large popular rebellion against the religious changes of the Reformation erupted in Devon and Cornwall and threatened to shake the foundations of the state.

It is a compelling and tragic story, which ended with slaughter and retribution on an immense scale. Stoyle’s telling of it is a triumphant demonstration that meticulously researched historical scholarship can also be enjoyably readable and emotionally engaging.

Book cover of The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England

Darren Oldridge Author Of Strange Histories: The Trial of the Pig, the Walking Dead, and Other Matters of Fact from the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds

From my list on dangerous spirits.

Why am I passionate about this?

I fell in love with history when I saw how it led to alternative ways of seeing the world – ways of understanding things that are now largely abandoned. I do not believe in “dangerous spirits.” But I know that people much smarter than me once took them for granted and thought carefully about their various activities. My work tries to recreate this lost intellectual landscape. In books like Strange Histories and The Devil: A Very Short Introduction, I have done my best to map out this landscape for general readers. This complements my academic role as Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Worcester.  

Darren's book list on dangerous spirits

Darren Oldridge Why did Darren love this book?

A neglected classic of popular history. This book taught me things about the history of magic that now seem so obvious and important that I wonder how I missed them before. Ryrie tells the story of the fraudulent magician Gregory Wisdom, whose deception of a Tudor nobleman led to allegations of attempted murder by witchcraft. More broadly, he reveals a world in which the widespread acceptance of occult phenomena made counterfeit magic alluringly credible, and charlatans co-existed with “genuine” practitioners of magic. I know of no other book that describes the twilight world of fake and real sorcery with such vividness and insight.

By Alec Ryrie,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Sorcerer's Tale as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An earl's son, plotting murder by witchcraft; conjuring spirits to find buried treasure; a stolen coat embroidered with pure silver; crooked gaming-houses and brothels; a terrifying new disease, and the self-trained surgeon who claims he can treat it.

This is the world of Gregory Wisdom, a physician, magician, and consummate con-man at work in sixteenth-century London. In this book, Alec Ryrie uses previously unknown documents to reconstruct this extraordinary man's career. The journey takes us through the cut-throat business of early modern medicine, down to Tudor London's gangland of fraud and organized crime; from the world of Renaissance magi and



Book cover of The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

Harriet Lyon Author Of Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England

From my list on the impact of the English Reformation.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of early modern Britain, with particular interests in the cultural and religious history of the English Reformation, as well as in the fields of historical memory and time. I enjoy pursuing these subjects not only through research and reading, but also teaching. I am currently the J. H. Plumb College Lecturer in History at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. 

Harriet's book list on the impact of the English Reformation

Harriet Lyon Why did Harriet love this book?

This book changed the way that I thought about the Reformation landscape. Alexandra Walsham shows that it was not only a terrain of ruins and fragments but also of converted and adapted structures, as well as of the memories and folk stories embedded in physical sites.

It taught me a lot about how the dissolution specifically was remembered, but also about the broader transformations within which it took place. The details in this book are endlessly rich and fascinating, and it is a great example of writing that takes serious the idea that history is rooted in space as well as time.

By Alexandra Walsham,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Reformation of the Landscape as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Reformation of the Landscape is a richly detailed and original study of the relationship between the landscape of Britain and Ireland and the tumultuous religious changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It explores how the profound theological and liturgical transformations that marked the era between 1500 and 1750 both shaped, and were in turn shaped by, the places and spaces within the physical environment in which they occurred. Moving beyond churches, cathedrals, and monasteries, it investigates how the Protestant and Catholic Reformations affected perceptions and practices associated with trees, woods, springs, rocks, mountain peaks, prehistoric monuments, and other



Book cover of The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village

Peter Marshall Author Of Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation

From my list on the English Reformation.

Why am I passionate about this?

Peter Marshall is Professor of History at the University of Warwick, co-editor of the English Historical Review, and the author of nine books and over sixty articles on the religious and cultural history of early modern Europe. His authoritative account of the Reformation in England, Heretics and Believers, was awarded the Wolfson History Prize in 2018. Peter is a native of the Orkney Islands, and currently writing a book on the islanders’ experiences in the Reformation era.

Peter's book list on the English Reformation

Peter Marshall Why did Peter love this book?

Eamon Duffy’s justly acclaimed ‘microhistory’ transports us away from the world of bishops, parliament and the court in order to track, across four crucial decades, the experiences of a tiny village on the edge of Exmoor in Devon, based on meticulous recordings in the ‘church book’ by the long-serving parish priest. It is a story in miniature of the tragically destructive aspects of the Reformation, but also an uplifting one in its depiction of the capacity of ordinary people to survive and adapt.

By Eamon Duffy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Voices of Morebath as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and antipapal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children?

In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of



Book cover of Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation

Harriet Lyon Author Of Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England

From my list on the impact of the English Reformation.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of early modern Britain, with particular interests in the cultural and religious history of the English Reformation, as well as in the fields of historical memory and time. I enjoy pursuing these subjects not only through research and reading, but also teaching. I am currently the J. H. Plumb College Lecturer in History at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. 

Harriet's book list on the impact of the English Reformation

Harriet Lyon Why did Harriet love this book?

There have been many histories of the English Reformation, but Peter Marshall sets the standard in this engaging and profoundly human take on the religious changes of the sixteenth century. I admire the way in which he balances the sweeping story of the legislative Reformation with small details and anecdotes that really bring the period to life.

This book reminds us that the Reformation cannot be understood simply as an institutional transformation but also as a cultural phenomenon and that real lives and livelihoods were at stake in the process of religious change.

By Peter Marshall,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Heretics and Believers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2018 WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE

Centuries on, what the Reformation was and what it accomplished remain deeply contentious. Peter Marshall's sweeping new history-the first major overview for general readers in a generation-argues that sixteenth-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of "reform" in various competing guises. King Henry VIII wanted an orderly, uniform Reformation, but his actions opened a Pandora's Box from which pluralism and diversity flowed and rooted themselves in English life.

With sensitivity to individual experience as well as masterfully synthesizing historical and institutional developments, Marshall



Book cover of Being Protestant in Reformation Britain

Harriet Lyon Author Of Memory and the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Early Modern England

From my list on the impact of the English Reformation.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of early modern Britain, with particular interests in the cultural and religious history of the English Reformation, as well as in the fields of historical memory and time. I enjoy pursuing these subjects not only through research and reading, but also teaching. I am currently the J. H. Plumb College Lecturer in History at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. 

Harriet's book list on the impact of the English Reformation

Harriet Lyon Why did Harriet love this book?

For all the books about the Protestant Reformation, very few stop to consider what it meant to be Protestant – how it felt, or what daily life was really like. Alec Ryrie tackles these questions both with empathy and analytical rigour, exploring the struggles and triumphs of individuals seeking to live godly lives against a background of ongoing religious change.

This book really foregrounds "ordinary" people and, in doing so, highlights the extraordinary quality of the everyday. It helped me to reach a better understanding of Protestantism as a dynamic and sometimes contradictory movement, and of its emotional resonance for those who embraced the reformed faith.

By Alec Ryrie,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Being Protestant in Reformation Britain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Reformation was about ideas and power, but it was also about real human lives. Alec Ryrie provides the first comprehensive account of what it actually meant to live a Protestant life in England and Scotland between 1530 and 1640, drawing on a rich mixture of contemporary devotional works, sermons, diaries, biographies, and autobiographies to uncover the lived experience of early modern Protestantism.

Beginning from the surprisingly urgent, multifaceted emotions of Protestantism, Ryrie explores practices of prayer, of family and public worship, and of reading and writing, tracking them through the life course from childhood through conversion and vocation to



Book cover of The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations

Crawford Gribben Author Of The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland

From my list on Christianity in Ireland.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like anyone else who takes an interest in Ireland, I’ve been fascinated by the long and often very difficult history of the island’s experience of religion. Where I live, in county Antrim, religious imagery appears everywhere – in churches and schools, obviously, but also on signboards posted onto trees, and in the colourful rags that are still hung up to decorate holy wells. This book is the fruit of twenty years of thinking about Christian Ireland - its long and difficult history, and its sudden and difficult collapse.

Crawford's book list on Christianity in Ireland

Crawford Gribben Why did Crawford love this book?

Since the later sixteenth century, historians have been trying to explain why the Irish refused to follow their political leaders into the newly established protestant church. Jefferies’s book highlights the scale of the problem – showing that by the turn of the seventeenth century, seventy years after the beginnings of protestant reform, the number of native Irish converts amounted to little more than one hundred. Pushing against the triumphalism that marked an older way of writing the history of the reformation, Jefferies demonstrates the popularity of the late medieval church and argues that historians should reframe their research questions.

It might be less important to ask why the protestant reformation failed, he suggests, and more important to ask why – despite everything – the Catholic church remained so popular.

By Henry A. Jefferies,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This important book examines Ireland's experiences of the Tudor reformations. Part I shows that the Irish Church, far from being in decline, enjoyed an upsurge in lay support before Henry VIII's reformation. Part II shows how the early Tudor reformations failed to address the pre-existing weaknesses of the Irish Church, while Cardinal Pole's program for Catholic restoration in Mary's reign did not enjoy the time needed to do so. Instead, the problems of the Irish Church were exacerbated as Tudor policy in Ireland became increasingly militarist and expansionist. Under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth, the English crown was able



Book cover of A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549
Book cover of The Sorcerer's Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England
Book cover of The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

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