Crow Court was a labour of love. Quite how much love is illustrated by the amount of labour. Very little in the fourteen sections that make up Crow Court is lacking in foundation. From the description of Victoria's wedding dress at the start to the description of geological layers at the end, the details were based on careful research. Some of these points of historicity may be of interest, so the following list might allow the curious reader to follow up with more in-depth investigations. A debt of gratitude is also owed to the authors of the works listed below.

The Bankes Family The Exiled Collector   Anne Sebba A Kingston Lacey Childhood   Viola Bankes and Pamela Watkins

Contemporary Reference Dorset Post Office Directory 1859 Enquire Within Upon Everything 1890 Pigot and Company’s National Commercial Directory 1830

Crows, Corvids, Avian Behaviour and Natural Science Corvus: A life With Birds   Esther Wilson Crow Country   Mark Cocker Mind of the Raven   Bernd Heinrich The Secret Life of Birds   Colin Tudge Traditional Witchcraft for the Woods and Forests   Melusine Draco

Gender, Sex and Sexuality Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian England   Louise A Jackson The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton   Diane Atkinson Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace   Kate Summerscale The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister   Ed. Helena Whitbread Strangers   Graham Robb Victorian Guide to Sex   Fern Riddell Wilde’s Last Stand   Philip Hoare Women Who Did   Ed. Angelique Richardson

General Histories & Monographs Perilous Question   Antonia Fraser The Proud Tower   Barbara Tuchman Victoria   AN Wilson The Victorians   AN Wilson Victorians   Jeremy Paxman

Language and Dialect Complete Old English   Mark Atherton Early England   William Barnes First Steps in Old English   Stephen Pollington A Glossary of the Dorset Dialect   William Barnes The People’s Poet   Alan Chedzoy The Poems of William Barnes   Ed. Valerie Shepherd Voices of Victorian London   Henry Mayhew

Palaeontology and Evolution The Dinosaur Hunters   Deborah Cadbury Earth's Deep History   Martin J S Rudwick The Map that Changed The World   Simon Winchester On the Origin of Species   Charles Darwin

Sailing From Sail to Steam: Recollections of a Naval Life   Captain A T Mahan Ghost Ship   Brian Hicks The Log of a Lime Juice   Captain James P Barker Master in Sail   Captain James S Learmont Rounding the Horn   Dallas Murphy Square Rigger Days   Charles W Domville-Fife Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative   Richard Henry Dana The War With Cape Horn   Alan Villiers

Smuggling Isaac Gulliver: Le Contrabandier   Beresford Leavens The French Revolution   Thomas Carlyle Smuggling In Hampshire and Dorset 1700-1850   Geoffrey Morley

Theatre The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre   Ed. Kerry Powell The Days I knew   Lilly Langtry Theatre in the Victorian Age   Michael R Booth Victorian Theatre   Russell J Jackson

Victorian Life Britain's Working Coast in Victorian and Edwardian Times   John Hannavy Consuming Passions   Judith Flanders Dickens’s Victorian London 1839-1901   Alex Werner and Tony Williams Dorset Murders   Nicola Sly Kilbert’s Diary   Ed. William Plomer Life in Victorian England: The Church   Virginia Schomp Seven Wonders of the Industrial World   Deborah Cadbury The Singing Bourgeois   Derek B Scott The Victorian Farm   Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn and Rith Goodman The Victorian House   Judith Flanders

Wimborne Minsters and Dorset Charlie Cutler Had a Donkey   Belinda Ransome Discover Dorset: Regency, Riot and Reform   Jo Draper Discover Dorset: The Victorians   Jude James A History of Wimborne Minster and District   A Lindsay Clegg Longshoreman   Benjamin Pond The Story of George Lovelace and the Tollpuddle Martyrs   Andrew Norman