If you find any others that are of general interest do let me know. I list some of the ones I know about here.

The House of Stanley
from the 12th Century

Peter E. Stanley's book, was published in August 1998. This is thoroughly recommended and essential for all serious Stanley researchers. The book was published in August, 1998 and runs to 500 pages including 88 pedigree tables & charts and over 40 assorted photographs, line drawings and portraits. The U.K. price is £25 per copy, postage & packing free within the U.K. on orders of two or more, otherwise £3.50 should be added. It is a genealogical chronicle of eight centuries of the Stanley line and their wider role in the flux and reflux of national life which culminated in the appointment of the 15th Earl of Derby as Prime minister in 1852. The book itself is the product of a half-century of meticulous new research and the refining of existing scholarship which comprehends data from the lives of the Stanleys between the 12th and 20th centuries.
 

The Stanley name is familiar to all students of English history. Its bearers have enjoyed  a distinguished role in the political arena, gaining power, prestige and influence on the national government throughout the Middle Ages and well into le grand siecle. The turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses and Reformation are narrated with verve, historiographical analysis of events in the political macrocosm being combined with a subject-by-subject precis which portrays the experiences and acts of the Stanleys who either lived in the period or took part in the fray. Later Stanleys are no less interesting: the author reveals that William Stanley (1561-1642), the 6th Earl of Derby, may well have been the true writer of Shakespeare's plays and the 19th century saw a progression of Stanleys take their place around the cabinet table.

To see excerpts from the book click here.

Announcement

The author Peter E. Stanley died last year. I understand that his book, a lifetime’s research of the Stanley family, is now out-of-print.

His family have contacted me and tell me that they do have some copies still available which they have acquired from the publishers. Copies are limited and when these have gone there will be no more. If you want to take advantage of this then copies are £25 each plus postage & packing and can be obtained by emailing Roger Joyce directly.

I have no financial interest in the book but I do thoroughly recommend it.
 

The Stanleys of Alderley,
1927-2001,
A Politically Incorrect Story

Lord Stanley takes up his family's history in 1927, and describes the end of the Alderley Estates in Cheshire in the 1930s through waste and fecklessness under the 6th Lord Stanley. Inheriting in tragic circumstances, he (with his younger brother) restored the family name, but also participated in the end of the House of Lords as a hereditary body. This is a contribution to the long history of this family, to join Bertrand Russell's Amberley Papers, and Nancy Mitford's Ladies of Alderley.