Atlick, Richard D., Victorian People and Ideas, New York: Norton, 1973.

An overview of Victorian culture and history, presented thematically as a companion to the literature of the age.

McCarthy, Mary, The Stones of Florence, New York: Harvest Books, 1963.

Writing about its most significant city, McCarthy paints a compelling picture of the Renaissance in all its glory and corruption.

Pater, Walter, The Renaissance, Chicago: Pandora Books, 1978.

A Victorian, Pater resurrects the great figures of the Renaissance. His biographical sketches tell not only of the period about which he writes but also about his nineteenth-century audience, which had grown skeptical of its Renaissance legacy.