A Random Selection
How long is a piece of string? So many excellent history books abound, not to mention journals that I have only been able to select a few. There is an excellent series of biographies of English monarchs published by Methuen and Thames & Hudson. Sutton Publishing (Stroud, Gloucs.,UK) publishes many UK local histories and medieval topics. The journals of the Richard III and Jane Austen Societies contain some excellent source material.

General British and European History
(with more emphasis on medieval since that is my forté)

Anderson, Bonnie S. & Zinsser, Judith P., A History of Their Own (Penguin, 1988)

Baugh, Albert C. A History of the English Language (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1957 ed)

Bradfield, N., Historical Costumes of England 1066-1956 (Harrap, 1959)

Brohaugh, William, English through the Ages (Ohio: Writer’s Digest, Books 1998)

Durant, David N., Where Queen Elizabeth slept and What the Butler saw (New York: St Martins Press, 1997)

Evans, Joan, A History of Jewellery 1100-1870 (New York: Dover Publications,Inc., 1970 ed)

Gies, Frances & Joseph Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel (HarperPerennial ed, 1995)

Lacey, Robert and Danziger, Danny, The Year 1000 (Little Brown and Company, 1999)

Landsberg, Sylvia The Medieval Garden (British Museum Press)

Muir, Richard The English Village (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1983 ed)

Norman Vesey, Arms and Armour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964)

Past Times Lock, Stock and Barrel (Oxford 1998) provides origins of many phrases

Platt, Colin, The Castle in Medieval England and Wales (London: Chancellor Press, 1995 ed)

Rackham, Oliver, The History of the Countryside (London: J.M. Dent, 1993 ed)

Reaney, P.H., A Dictionary of English Surnames (OUP, 1997 ed)

Wood, Margaret, The English Medieval House (London: Bracken Books, 1983)

Tannahill, Reay, Sex in History (London: Little Brown & Co., Abacus ed.,1989)

Tannahill, Reay, Food in History (London, 1988)

Tuchman, D., A Distant Mirror (Macmillan Papermac, 1995 ed) A wonderful look at the world of the fourteenth century.

Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century Britain (just a starter sample)

Burney, Frances Journals and Letters (Penguin, 2001)

Gadd. David Georgian Summer: Bath in the Eighteenth Century (Wiltshire: Moonraker Press 1997)

Creevey, T., Thomas Creevey’s papers, 1793-1838, ed.John Gore (Penguin, 1985)

Character Features

Grambs, David, The Describer's Dictionary ISBN0-393-31265-8.

Jackson, Carole, Colour Me Beautiful (Australia: Little Hills Press, 1985)

Australian Sources
A browse along the Australian history reference shelves in any Australian State Reference Library is an excellent start for researching novels with Australian content. State libraries house archives containing personal letters and papers, old newspapers and magazines, brochures, local histories etc, whereas state archives offices hold all colonial official records: lists of convicts, musters, shipping lists etc. University libraries contain a fabulous range of Australian books and access is free, but unless you are a student or staff member, an annual borrowing card is expensive.
The quality of local history books vary. A good bibliography usually indicates a professional approach, and if the book has been put out by a reputable publisher, this implies the text has had a thorough edit.

Australian starters

Burke, K., Gold and Silver: Photographs of Australian Goldfields (Penguin Books)

Australians: a historical library (Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, 1987)— this reference set of ten volumes, compiled for the Bicentenary, includes a historical atlas, a gazetteer : Events and Places, a bibliography of local histories, slice histories and a dictionary of Australian history

Using the Internet
Compared to published history books, information put up by private individuals has not been scrutinised. There are some very good sites but if, for instance, you are researching herbal remedies used in the past, bear in mind whether the plant common names are European or N.American. If you are researching French history and have a reasonable grasp of the language, a search engine like Voila may provide more sites than an English language one.