Historical fiction · ~1500–1789

Tudor & early modern historical fiction

Early modern historical fiction (~1500–1789): Tudors, exploration, Reformation, revolutions brewing. Tudor courts, Reformation politics, and early exploration define much of early modern historical fiction. Mantel-era politics and renaissance intrigue live here.

Plan this era as a journey Bestsellers & decade ratings

Curated on HisFic (34)

Hand-picked titles from HisFic's catalog tagged for this era.

Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
Linked stories follow two half-sisters’ lineages across centuries of African and American history.
Early modern · Victorian / Gilded Age · Family saga · Literary
Shōgun
James Clavell
An English pilot is shipwrecked into the deadly politics of feudal Japan.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Biographical
Bring Up the Bodies
Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell, now Master Secretary, engineers the fall of Anne Boleyn as Henry VIII turns toward Jane Seymour. The middle novel of Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy is court politics at close range—cool, lethal, and intimate.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Musashi
Eiji Yoshikawa
In 1600, after the Battle of Sekigahara, a village youth called Takezo is left among the dead and hunted as an outlaw until the monk Takuan shuts him up with the books that turn him into Miyamoto Musashi. Eiji Yoshikawa’s novel, serialized from 1935 and read in English in Charles Terry’s translation, is early-modern adventure historical fiction of the years that follow—the road to Kyoto, the Yoshioka swordsmen, and the 1612 duel with Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryu Island.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Biographical
Outlander
Diana Gabaldon
A WWII nurse walks through standing stones into Jacobite Scotland—and a complicated love story.
Early modern · World War II era · Time-slip · Romance
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell rises through Tudor England’s deadly court, told in close, modern-feeling prose.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell
The plague, a marriage, and the death of Shakespeare’s son—told with intimate, luminous focus.
Early modern · Literary · Biographical
The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers
Margaret George
Henry VIII’s manuscript, glossed in the margins by his fool Will Somers, runs from a 1491 childhood through six wives, the break with Rome, and the dissolution of the monasteries, with Cromwell, Wolsey, More, and Anne Boleyn on the same pages as the king who signs their fates. Margaret George’s 1986 novel is early-modern biographical historical fiction of Tudor England told from the throne, not from the minister’s rooms.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
The House of Boleyn
Tracy Borman
Tudor historian Tracy Borman tells the Boleyn family's rise and fall from Hever Castle—Anne, Mary, Thomas, and the household watching Henry VIII's court close in.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Ross Poldark
Winston Graham
In October 1783 Ross Poldark comes back from the American war to Nampara in Cornwall and finds his father dead, the land derelict, and Elizabeth Chynoweth promised to his cousin Francis. Winston Graham’s 1945 novel is early-modern saga historical fiction of the years through 1787—a mine he fights to reopen, the bankers and gentry of Truro, and Demelza Carne, the miner’s daughter he takes in from a fair, who is his wife by the end of this first volume.
Early modern · Family saga · Romance
Scaramouche
Rafael Sabatini
In Brittany on the eve of the Revolution, lawyer André-Louis Moreau watches a marquis kill his closest friend, then goes from a Rennes courtroom to a traveling theater—where he plays the clown Scaramouche—and on to a Paris fencing hall as France turns on its nobles. Rafael Sabatini’s 1921 novel is French Revolution historical adventure of disguise, the sword, and a man born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Regency / Napoleonic · Early modern · Adventure & epic · Romance
Year of Wonders
Geraldine Brooks
A Derbyshire village quarantines itself during the plague—and a servant girl finds her strength.
Early modern · Literary
News of the Dead
James Robertson
A Highland glen’s stories across centuries of saints, strangers, and secrets (Walter Scott Prize 2022).
Medieval · Early modern · Literary · Time-slip
The Cattle Killing
John Edgar Wideman
Linked narratives of plague, prophecy, and Black life across centuries (SAH Prize 1997).
Early modern · Late 20th century · Literary · Time-slip
The East Indian
Brinda Charry
A boy from India arrives in colonial Virginia—America’s earliest Asian immigrant story (SAH Prize 2025).
Early modern · Literary · Adventure & epic
The Gallows Pole
Ben Myers
Coin-clippers in 18th-century Yorkshire defy king and crown (Walter Scott Prize 2018).
Early modern · Literary · Adventure & epic
The Mirror & the Light
Hilary Mantel
The final act of Thomas Cromwell’s rise and ruin (Walter Scott Prize 2021).
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
Aztec
Gary Jennings
In 1529 Bishop Juan de Zumárraga has the elderly Mexica Mixtli—born on the island of Xaltocan in 1466—dictate his life for King Carlos: a stonemason’s son who becomes a scribe, a trader, a warrior, and a councilor to Moctezuma, then watches Hernán Cortés bring down the Triple Alliance. Gary Jennings’s 1980 novel is adventure historical fiction of the Aztec world from a fifteenth-century childhood to the fall of Tenochtitlan, told by a man the bishop will prosecute for heresy once the chronicle is finished.
Medieval · Early modern · Adventure & epic · Family saga
Dissolution
C. J. Sansom
In 1537 the lawyer Matthew Shardlake is sent by Thomas Cromwell to the Sussex monastery of Scarnsea, where Commissioner Robin Singleton has been found with his head severed, and the sacrilege around the killing will not stay a single death. C. J. Sansom’s 2003 novel is early-modern mystery historical fiction of the dissolution of the monasteries, a reformer who still has to walk the cloisters, and a detective Cromwell expects to close the file.
Early modern · Mystery
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier
A servant in Vermeer’s household becomes entangled in the making of a famous portrait.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Irving Stone
Apprenticed in Medici Florence, Michelangelo Buonarroti wrestles marble, popes, and his own fury from the David through the Sistine ceiling to the dome of St. Peter’s—while Renaissance Italy tears through poisoning princes and warring pontiffs. Irving Stone’s 1961 novel is early-modern biographical historical fiction of genius and patronage: the artist’s life at the center of sixteenth-century Florence and Rome.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
The Marriage Portrait
Maggie O'Farrell
Lucrezia de’ Medici is married at fifteen to the Duke of Ferrara, then isolated in a court where a duchess can be painted, praised, and quietly discarded. O’Farrell turns a famous rumor—that Lucrezia was murdered—into close, tense biographical historical fiction of Renaissance Italy.
Early modern · Biographical · Literary
The Other Boleyn Girl
Philippa Gregory
Mary Boleyn’s perspective on the rise of Anne Boleyn and the dangerous theater of Henry VIII’s court.
Early modern · Biographical · Romance
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
In 1625, Gascon cadet d’Artagnan rides to Paris to join Louis XIII’s musketeers and falls in with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—then into Cardinal Richelieu’s war of spies, diamonds, and honor. Dumas’s novel is early-modern historical adventure: duels, the queen’s honour, and the friendship behind “all for one, one for all.”
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Military & war
An Instance of the Fingerpost
Iain Pears
In 1663 Oxford, just after Charles II’s return, fellow Robert Grove is found dead at New College and the servant Sarah Blundy is accused of poisoning him. Iain Pears’s 1997 novel is early-modern mystery historical fiction of four witnesses who will not agree—a Venetian visitor, a dispossessed student, the mathematician John Wallis, and the antiquary Anthony Wood—each telling a Restoration in which the murder is also a political plot.
Early modern · Mystery · Literary
Forever Amber
Kathleen Winsor
In 1660, sixteen-year-old Amber St. Clare comes up to London as Charles II returns and, left penniless when Bruce Carlton sails, climbs from the streets and the playhouse to the king’s favor. Kathleen Winsor’s 1944 novel is early-modern romance historical fiction of that Restoration life—the plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and Amber’s long pursuit of Carlton, who will not marry her and settles in Virginia.
Early modern · Romance
My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk
In nine snowy days of 1591, Black comes home to Istanbul and finds the Sultan’s miniaturists split over a secret book that would paint faces the Frankish way; Elegant has already been killed, and the corpse, a dog, a gold coin, and the color red take turns naming the murderer. Orhan Pamuk’s 1998 novel (English translation 2001) is early-modern mystery historical fiction of Ottoman book art, heresy, and a workshop that may go blind before it tells the truth.
Early modern · Mystery · Literary
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Lockwood, new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, takes shelter at Wuthering Heights and hears how the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw loved each other on the Yorkshire moors—until Cathy married Edgar Linton, died in childbirth, and Heathcliff’s revenge closed on the next generation at both houses. Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel is eighteenth-century gothic literary historical fiction of obsessive love, class, and a house that will not let the dead go.
Early modern · Regency / Napoleonic · Literary · Romance
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
After eighteen years in the Bastille, Dr Manette is restored to his daughter Lucie in London—then the French Revolution draws an exiled aristocrat, a wasted English lawyer, and the Manettes back to Paris and the shadow of the Guillotine. Dickens’s novel is historical fiction of 1775–1793 London and Paris: sacrifice, revenge, and the best and worst of times.
Regency / Napoleonic · Early modern · Family saga · Literary
Lorna Doone
R. D. Blackmore
On Exmoor in the 1670s, yeoman’s son John Ridd sees the Doone clan kill his father, then finds a child named Lorna in their hidden valley and grows up set on winning her out of that stronghold. R. D. Blackmore’s 1869 novel is early-modern romance historical fiction of the Doone Valley, the Great Winter, and Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685—a Somerset love story against an outlaw clan the law will not touch.
Early modern · Romance · Adventure & epic
The Miniaturist
Jessie Burton
A young wife in 1680s Amsterdam receives a cabinet house—and cryptic dolls that seem to know too much.
Early modern · Mystery · Literary
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
In 1757, during the French and Indian War, scout Hawkeye and the Mohican warriors Chingachgook and Uncas guide Cora and Alice Munro through the forests around Fort William Henry as the siege, a massacre, and a pursuit up the lakes close in. James Fenimore Cooper’s novel is early-American historical adventure: wilderness warfare, a famous frontier friendship, and the Leatherstocking tale readers still know by title.
Early modern · Adventure & epic · Military & war
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In 1640s Boston, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet A after bearing a child out of wedlock, while the town’s beloved minister hides his share of the secret and her long-lost husband returns under a new name to hunt the father. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is Puritan historical fiction of shame, hypocrisy, and a woman who will not name her lover—the American classic readers still search by title.
Early modern · Literary
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe
In 1584, Emily St. Aubert loses her father on a journey from Gascony through the Pyrenees, falls in love with Valancourt, and is taken by her aunt’s new husband, Signor Montoni, from Venice to the Castle of Udolpho in the Apennines. Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel is early-modern romance historical fiction of Emily’s imprisonment there, the black veil she is afraid to lift, and the engagement Montoni will not let her keep.
Early modern · Romance · Mystery