William Harrison Ainsworth, The Lancashire Witches (1849), about the witches of Pendle Hill in Lancaster County, England, who were tried and executed in 1612. Peter Ackroyd, Milton in America (1986), alternative history in which Milton flees England in 1660 after Cromwell falls. Purchase from the Book Depository, Amazon or Powell's Books Novels with seventeenth-century settings outside Europe and North America (Africa, Asia, Australia and the Middle East) will be grouped in separate pages, by continent, when posted.

The seventeenth century offers a variety of stirring historical settings, including the Civil Wars in England between the Royalist supporters of King Charles I and the Puritan Parliamentarians the Thirty Years War that engulfed Germany and its neighbors the migration from the Old World to the American Colonies and Canada the last of the witch persecutions, especially the hysteria in the Puritan colony of Salem and major advances in science led by mathematicians like Kepler and alchemists like Isaac Newton.įor the migration-rich seventeenth century, it is difficult to classify novels set partly in North America and partly in Europe by setting, so all novels set in North America appear in either the British Isles or the Continental Europe categories, depending on where the immigrant characters in a stand-alone novel or series of novels primarily came from. Mysteries: 17th Century European Continent and North America Mysteries: 17th Century Britain and North AmericaĬontinental Europe and North America in the 17th Century

The British Isles and North America in the 17th Century For news on the latest additions to this website, see the blog.

Silver Nutmeg by Norah Lofts