General works
The whole eight hundred years
- Wilson, Peter H. Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016. The standard modern account, arranged thematically rather than chronologically. The place to start.
- Whaley, Joachim. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 1493 to 1806 in detail; the best narrative for the later Empire.
- Wilson, Peter H. The Holy Roman Empire 1495–1806. 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. A short introduction to the constitutional structure.
- Bryce, James. The Holy Roman Empire. London: Macmillan, 1864. The Victorian classic. Beautifully written and wrong about almost everything structural; worth reading to see the myth being made.
- Heer, Friedrich. The Holy Roman Empire. Trans. Janet Sondheimer. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968.
Chapters I–III
Carolingians, Ottonians, Salians
- McKitterick, Rosamond. Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
- Nelson, Janet L. King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne. London: Allen Lane, 2019.
- Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages, c. 800–1056. London: Longman, 1991. Still the best single volume on the Ottonian and early Salian Empire.
- Leyser, Karl. Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottonian Saxony. London: Edward Arnold, 1979.
- Robinson, I. S. Henry IV of Germany, 1056–1106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. The fullest account of Canossa and the Investiture Controversy in English.
Chapters IV–VI
Staufer, interregnum, the Golden Bull
- Fuhrmann, Horst. Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050–1200. Trans. Timothy Reuter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Freed, John B. Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
- Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. London: Allen Lane, 1988.
- Arnold, Benjamin. Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. On how the territories acquired the sovereignty that defined the later Empire.
- Rowan, Steven, ed. and trans. The Golden Bull of 1356. In Imperial Reform and the Golden Bull.
Chapters VII–VIII
Reformation, Augsburg, the Thirty Years' War
- Wilson, Peter H. Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War. London: Allen Lane, 2009. The standard account, and unusually good on the Empire's own institutions during the war.
- Parker, Geoffrey, ed. The Thirty Years' War. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1997.
- MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700. London: Allen Lane, 2003.
- Roeck, Bernd. Civic Culture and Everyday Life in Early Modern Germany. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
- Croxton, Derek. Westphalia: The Last Christian Peace. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
- Asch, Ronald G. The Thirty Years War: The Holy Roman Empire and Europe, 1618–48. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.
Chapters IX–X
The later Empire and its dissolution
- Hochedlinger, Michael. Austria's Wars of Emergence, 1683–1797. London: Longman, 2003.
- Ingrao, Charles W. The Habsburg Monarchy 1618–1815. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
- Blanning, T. C. W. The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815. London: Allen Lane, 2007.
- Gagliardo, John G. Reich and Nation: The Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763–1806. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. On what contemporaries thought they were losing.
- Aretin, Karl Otmar von. Das Alte Reich 1648–1806. 4 vols. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993–2000. In German; the fullest treatment of the post-Westphalian Empire.
Institutions and documents
Courts, diets and constitutional texts
- Hughes, Michael. Early Modern Germany, 1477–1806. London: Macmillan, 1992.
- Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara. The Emperor's Old Clothes: Constitutional History and the Symbolic Language of the Holy Roman Empire. Trans. Thomas Dunlap. New York: Berghahn, 2015. On ceremony as constitutional substance; changed how the field reads the diets.
- Hartmann, Peter Claus. Der Immerwährende Reichstag zu Regensburg. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2001.
- Scott, Tom. The City-State in Europe, 1000–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Mout, Nicolette, ed. Die Kultur des Heiligen Römischen Reiches. Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004.