A Golden World.jpg
A Golden World.jpg

A Golden World by Lauren Working

from $11.98
Hardcover:

A glittering history reveals how Indigenous American goods—gold, jaguars, feathers, and forbidden knowledge—secretly reshaped the England of Shakespeare and the Tudors.

Praised by Booklist as "exhaustively researched" and hailed by award-winning historians as "glittering," "sparkling," and "gloriously technicolor."

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.98 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $29.95

__________________________________________

About the book:

We know the legends: Francis Drake's treasure ships, Walter Raleigh's gold-seeking voyages, the myth of El Dorado glittering on the horizon. But the deeper story of the Americas in Tudor and Stuart England has stayed hidden in plain sight—woven into hat felt, scattered as tobacco leaves on playhouse floors, dangling from a peddler's pack as a bejeweled "Indian hat."

A Golden World uncovers how Indigenous materials, knowledge, and labor saturated English culture during the so-called golden age of Shakespeare. Aztec jaguars, Colombian emeralds, and feathered garments knotted by Indigenous hands appear here in conversation with the era's love poetry, baroque portraits, and plays.

Historian Lauren Working centers Indigenous perspectives throughout, drawing on texts and materials created by Native writers, elders, and artists. The result is a history that refuses to separate the dazzle of empire from its cost—showing readers exactly whose labor and lives made the English Renaissance possible.

A glittering history reveals how Indigenous American goods—gold, jaguars, feathers, and forbidden knowledge—secretly reshaped the England of Shakespeare and the Tudors.

Praised by Booklist as "exhaustively researched" and hailed by award-winning historians as "glittering," "sparkling," and "gloriously technicolor."

Rent new hardcover on Trove: $11.98 - Each rental copy can be rented for 30 days. If you love the book and decide to keep it, the remaining balance applies.

Buy new hardcover on Trove: $29.95

__________________________________________

About the book:

We know the legends: Francis Drake's treasure ships, Walter Raleigh's gold-seeking voyages, the myth of El Dorado glittering on the horizon. But the deeper story of the Americas in Tudor and Stuart England has stayed hidden in plain sight—woven into hat felt, scattered as tobacco leaves on playhouse floors, dangling from a peddler's pack as a bejeweled "Indian hat."

A Golden World uncovers how Indigenous materials, knowledge, and labor saturated English culture during the so-called golden age of Shakespeare. Aztec jaguars, Colombian emeralds, and feathered garments knotted by Indigenous hands appear here in conversation with the era's love poetry, baroque portraits, and plays.

Historian Lauren Working centers Indigenous perspectives throughout, drawing on texts and materials created by Native writers, elders, and artists. The result is a history that refuses to separate the dazzle of empire from its cost—showing readers exactly whose labor and lives made the English Renaissance possible.

  • Publisher: Pegasus Books

    Title: A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Tudor and Stuart England

    Author: Lauren Working

    On Sale Date: July 7, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9798897100248

    ISBN 10: 9798897100248

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $29.95 USD

    BISAC: History / Europe / Great Britain / Tudor & Elizabethan Era (1485-1603)

    Page Count: 384

    Dimensions: 9 in H | 6 in W | 1.5 in T

    Weight: 1.2 lb

  • Lauren Working is Lecturer in Early Modern Studies at the University of York, born in Geneva and raised in Santa Barbara and Seattle, now living in England. Her academic book, The Making of an Imperial Polity, jointly won the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize in 2021, and her work on fashion and colonialism earned her a spot as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker that same year. She has lectured at institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Yale Center for British Art and the V&A.

  • Pre-release readers are calling it A Golden World glittering, eye-opening, and unflinching:

    • Early readers describe A Golden World as exhaustively researched and rich with detail, weaving rare archival finds into a fresh portrait of English culture.

    • One historian called it "exquisitely written," noting how it never lets readers forget the human cost—the labor and lives—behind the era's most coveted jewels, furs, sugar, and tobacco.

    • Another praised its "dark threads," describing how it entwines Indigenous and African influence with the gilded fantasy of the Tudor world.

    • A third called the writing "wonderfully stylish" and "gloriously technicolor," noting how it reveals England's New World fascination while honoring the Americas as an ancient world with traditions of its own.

This book is for you if:

  • You appreciate historians who center Indigenous voices and sources rather than telling this story only from the European side.

  • You're drawn to history that turns familiar objects—a hat, a pearl earring, a pinch of tobacco—into doorways onto hidden stories.

  • You loved On Savage Shores, All That She Carried, or The Ruin of All Witches and want another richly material, perspective-shifting history.

  • You want a fuller, more honest picture of the Tudor "golden age" that doesn't look away from colonialism's human cost.

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