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 (17)

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
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
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
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 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
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