I’m looking to write a story set in 1623 in a rural town in England, and as I don’t know much about the period need to do quite a bit of research. Does anyone know anywhere I can find more information, or know of any good books to read, which may start to give me an idea of the way people (across all classes) lived out their daily lives in this time? Anything which covers any aspect about daily life - from what people’s houses looked like and their amenities, to what they ate, to popular occupations and roles of men/women - would be really helpful.
Sadly, daily life is one of the most difficult aspects of history to trace. Think about it: if you are writing a diary about your life, are you going to talk about how you ate your meal or did your job? No, because it's a given!
But there has been plenty of literature that tries to trace the social history of 17th century England.
Keith Wrightson is the old school expert on the topic. You can start with English Society 1580-1680 (1982) and A Social History of England, 1550-1750 (2017). Another good overview book is J. A. Sharpe's Early Modern History: A Social History, 1550-1760 (1987). For women's lives, in particular, the most definitive work is Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford's Women in Early Modern England (1998). You might benefit from looking at specific parish, town or county based studies which can go more in depth about how communities worked overall. Try, for example, Sharpe's Population and Society in an East Devon Parish: Reproducing Colyton 1540-1840 (2002). For your specific questions, for food, try Overton et al., Production and Consumption in English Households, 1660-1750; for employment (just a hint, don't use the word occupation for all jobs! Occupations were very specific jobs in early modern England) you can try Thomas 'Work and leisure in pre-industrial society,' (1964) or Clark, Working Life of Women in the 17th Century (1992). There's lots of studies on the lives of poor people, but start with Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (1988).
You can also look at a variety of primary sources. The English Broadside Ballad archive has many sources of broadsides published in the early modern period. While many of them are satirical, they are still helpful to gauge what were the primary preoccupations of early modern people. For something to be satirized, it had to exist! Additionally, in the early modern period, there was a substantial social welfare system to provide for the poor. However, many times poor people had to write to receive this aid. These are called pauper letters, and can give great insight into the experiences of the poor. Try for example, King and Levene's edited collection of them, Voices of the Poor: Poor Law Depositions and Letters. Along the same lines, petitions presented to authorities can reveal much about the everyday problems of early modern people. You can see a sample of the through BHO's petitions collection.
Hope that works as a start. If you have any more specific questions about how things worked, please let me know! I can steer you in the right direction.
Well, (deep breath)
Also apologies in advance, some of my links you may not be able to access, but you might be able to find another version you can? The Google Books should be all available, although those only allow previews.
One way you could start is with this public lecture series on Youtube by Prof. Keith Wrightson which covers a variety of areas you can select for different issues you are most interested in. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL18B9F132DFD967A3
“If Walls Could Talk-The History of the Home” by Lucy Worsley covers domestic details which is relevant, although her account of Tudor/Stuart hygiene is in my opinion slightly over-critical. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2abBtokO9r-thS1QdygEOJIagn7XZZOz (for some reason someone put vines at the end of this playlist, you can definitely ignore those).
"The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare” by R. Malcolm Smuts (2016) covers close up to your particular point and covers a fairly diverse range of topics; https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WdodDAAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Another book overview, although slightly earlier focus, is “The Elizabethan World” by Susan Doran and Norman Jones (2011): https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6iiDBAAAQBAJ&dq=france+1591+agreement+buckhurst&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
“How to be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Everyday Life” by Ruth Goodman (2015) is a good look at focused though varied domestic aspects although also slightly earlier focus than your reference point; https://books.google.com.au/books?id=huv8CAAAQBAJ&vq=hat&source=gbs_navlinks_s
“From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England” by John Gillingham (2002) and “Tudor Humanism and the Roman Past: A Background to Shakespeare” by Paul Dean (1988) might be relevant for the higher class characters: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3679348.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A6617f1758875d2e41df36f28ad8032ba
If you intend to depict or reference London then “The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London” by Ian W. Archer (1991) (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=MHp03egt1a0C&source=gbs_navlinks_s) and it also discusses some of the politics, economy and social tensions that were generally affecting life in England.
For housing, “Building in Earth in Late-Medieval England” by Christopher Dyer (2008) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/174962908X365046?casa_token=ZT7IxPvOcd4AAAAA:4m0rkpvxckggHdtTUcyZlInfJuw0hM_e5qJNnXFxQZKpXAQSY5UMQbfZrCd-SMMZYo5Ft4Ij3UeHZTY and “Labourers in late sixteenth-century England: a case study for north Norfolk” by Hassel Smith (1989) (Part I):
(Part II)
These include some of the details of poorer houses, the lives of labourers and the way things operated in the country which is definitely relevant to your story brief.
There's also “Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England” by David Cressy (1980): https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IhspAViDdvEC&dq=cressy+literacy+and+the+social+order&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
You could also try “Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England” by Pauline Croft (1995).
Covering family and romantic life I have:
“Birth, Marriage, and Death : Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England”, David Cressy (1997)
“The Making of Marriage in Mid-Tudor England: Evidence From the Records of Matrimonial Contract Litigation” by Ralph Houlbrooke (1985).
“Love and Dishonour in Elizabethan England: two families and a failed marriage, by Ralph Houlbrooke, Suffolk, Boydell and Brewer, 2018”, review by Emily Betz.
And “Household and Kinship in Sixteenth-Century England, by Miranda Chaytor”, by Keith Wrightson (1981).
The most important thing I find is to read on a variety of topics, a variety of aspects of a topic, and different authors with somewhat varied opinions and use a little bit of your judgement in taking an approach. Particularly for creative historical work; since we can never really say for sure what was true and some details are undocumented or unexplored, there is a lot of room for creative liberty, even including the possibility that some credible seeming sources or good theories are wrong, since you don't have to proof it for fiction as long as it's possible.