INDISPENSABLE
- Dictionnaire du Second Empire, ed. Jean Tulard, Paris: Fayard, 1995, 1347 p.
In French, but worth the effort.
ON NAPOLEON III
- Smith, W.H.C., Napoleon III: the Pursuit of Prestige, London: Collins and Brown, 1991, 144 p.
Brief but very useful – the only work in English by the Irish specialist on all things Second Empire – his biography of Napoleon III (in French, Hachette, 1983) is the standard work. - McMillan, J.F., Napoleon III, London: Longman (Profiles in Power), 1991, 208 p.
- Guest, I., Napoleon III in England, London: British Technical and General Press, 1951
ON THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE
- Kurtz, H., The Empress Eugénie, 1826-1920, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964, 407 p.
A useful biography – see also that by William Smith (in French, Bartillat, 1998).
THE PRINCE IMPERIAL
- Tisdall, E.E.P., The Prince Imperial: a study of his life among the British, [London]: Jarrolds, [1959]
The most recent monograph.
BEFORE THE SECOND EMPIRE
- Mansel, P., Paris between the empires, 1814-1852, London: John Murray, 2001, 559 p.
ON THE SECOND EMPIRE
- Smith, W.H.C., Second Empire and Commune: France 1848-1871, London: Longman, 1985
ON THE PRUSSIAN CRISIS AND THE WAR OF 1870
- Bonnin, G. (trans. I.M. Massey), Bismark and the Hohenzollern Candidature, London: Chatto and Windus, 1957, 312 p.
- Case, L., French opinion on War and Diplomacy during the Second Empire, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954, 339 p.
- Howard, M., The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France, 1870-1871, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960, 512 p.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
- Mainardi, P., Art and Politics of the Second Empire. The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, 247 p.
- Pinkney, D., Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958, 245 p.
- Saalman, H., Haussmann: Paris transformed, New York: George Braziller, [1971], 128 p.
- Jordan, D.P., Transforming Paris: the life and labors of Baron Haussmann, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 455 p.