The Geoffrey of Monmouth Research Project

Access the Geoffrey of Monmouth online manuscript catalogue

Geoffrey of Monmouth’s influential History of the Kings of Britain (or De gestis Britonum, c. 1138) survives in well over 200 manuscript copies. During the 1980s and 90s, a substantial collection of microfilm copies of these manuscripts was assembled under the auspices of the ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth Research Project’, headed by Professor David Dumville in association with Dr Richard Barber of Boydell and Brewer academic press, and supported by a grant from the Vinaver fund. These microfilms were added to several other items to form an impressive and unparalleled collection for the study of this text. The collection includes the following:

  • Microfilm or microfiche copies of 161 manuscripts containing Geoffrey’s History, his Prophecies of Merlin, and various abridgements of the History.
  • Microfilm copies of two manuscripts containing a closely related Latin poem of 5000 hexameters called Gesta Regum Britannie.
  • Two volumes of photographs of six manuscript copies of Geoffrey’s History (CUL Mm.5.29; Corpus 281; Cotton Nero D VIII, Royal 4 C XI, Royal 13 D II, Salisbury 121).
  • Three volumes containing an unpublished, hand-written edition of the Second Variant Version of Geoffrey’s History, by Professor Jacob Hammer (1894–1953).

Thanks to a grant from the Isaac Newton Trust (2025), a full online catalogue of the manuscripts containing Geoffrey’s History and Prophecies of Merlin is now available via the link above. The catalogue provides an index for the microfilm collection, and contains further links to manuscript repository catalogues and digital facsimiles wherever these are available.

Anyone who wishes to consult the collection should contact Dr Ben Guy to arrange a visit (bdg25@cam.ac.uk). Any updates or corrections to the online catalogue should be sent to the same address.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Professor Julia Crick for allowing us to use the headline manuscript information from her publications on this topic; to Dr Jacob Currie for providing advice on the catalogue’s repository information; to Dr Eleanor Smith, who was the Research Assistant responsible for compiling the catalogue; and to Jennifer Pollard, the Faculty Computing Officer, who kindly designed the catalogue’s web interface.