A Golden World

How the Americas Transformed Tudor and Stuart England

Lauren Working

A glittering new history of how the Americas transformed the Tudors and Stuarts that provides a fresh understanding the cultural exchange between the “Old” and “New” worlds.

From rumors of lost Amazonian cities of gold to the silver running through the mountains of Bolivia, hopes for dazzling wealth fueled the imperial fantasies of the Tudors and Stuarts. Stories of treasure ships and the feats of privateers from Francis Drake to Walter Raleigh have become entrenched in myth and legend—but what did Elizabethans actually know about Venezuela, or the Chesapeake? How did Indigenous people and ther knowledge enter the art, fashion, and literature of Shakespeare’s time—and at what cost?

From tobacco leaves strewn in playhouses on the Thames to a bejeweled ‘Indian hat’ carried on the back of a wandering peddler in the English countryside, A Golden World uses tangible history and artefacts to illuminate the unexpected ways that the Americas and its people became a visible and material presence in English culture in the first era of colonization.

Showcasing Indigenous perspectives through texts and materials created by Native writers, elders, and artists, and bringing Aztec jaguars, blue-green Colombian emeralds, and feathered garments knotted by Indigenous hands in conversation with love poetry, baroque portraits, and plays about shipwrecks, this award-winning historian presents an altogether new history of the ‘golden age’ of the Tudors and Stuarts, shedding light on the craft and labor of those in the Americas who contributed to the English Renaissance as we know it, and investigating what this means for heritage today.

While England’s fascination with eastern powers has been more readily acknowledged, A Golden World focuses on how Atlantic colonization provides a distinct and crucial part of this cultural history. From sight and sound to touch and taste in the ‘golden age’ of Shakespeare, Lauren Working gives new insight into the dynamics of power and desire for lands and resources in the Americas and how it changed the course of history.

Lauren Working is Lecturer in Early Modern Studies at the University of York. Her  academic book, The Making of an Imperial Polity jointly won the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize in 2021. She has given talks and seminars at museums on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Yale Center for British Art to the V&A. Her work on fashion and colonialism was recognised by BBC Radio 3 when she was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021. Working was born in Geneva and raised in Santa Barbara and Seattle. She lives in England.

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Endorsements & Reviews

“A glittering account which casts early modern England in an entirely new light. Lauren Working weaves tales of extraordinary journeys made by artifacts and materials from the Americas—objects often hidden in plain sight whose significance is revealed here for the first time.” Miranda Malins, author of The Puritan Princess and House of Cromwell

“A wonderfully stylish, gloriously technicolor book that wears its immense learning lightly. The vivid picture of England that it paints gleams with gold and pearls and feathers from the New World of the Americas, shaped both by encounter and extraction. And in the process, it reminds us that ‘New World’ itself was also an ancient one, thrumming with its own poetry, traditions, and peoples.” Nandini Das, author of Courting India, winner of the British Academy Book Prize

“An unexpected and original take on understanding the Renaissance and its connections with the Americas through the material culture of the time. A Golden World is a deep history grounded in rich archival evidence that promises to tell a new story about the Americas and early modern England as inextricably connected.” Judges of The Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer's Award

"An absolute joy to read. This book unveils how the Americas did not simply widen England's horizons-they reconfigured its identity.” Stephanie Pratt, PhD, author of American Indians in British Art

“The early roots of English imperialism, seen through the lens of the objects, animals, and people transported from the New World. Working focuses on the late 16th and early-17th centuries, when ‘people, plants, animals, and artefacts from the Americas entered English art and literature for the first time.’ A provocative history.” Kirkus Reviews