Few books purporting to be historical have so consistently annoyed historians as the one by Geoffrey of Monmouth usually referred to as The History of the Kings of Britain, probably written by 1137. Many would prefer not to call it a history at all, since it is a highly imaginative work incorporating earlier Latin histories, oral tradition from various languages, allusions to scripture and classical sources, and, most prominently, Geoffrey's own fanciful intellect (which he hid under the improbable conceit that he was simply translating “a very old book in the British tongue”). Already in the late twelfth century, astute readers knew much of it was fiction. From Geoffrey we learn of the comings and goings of the Romans in Britain, of Leir and Cordelia, and, most famously, of Arthur and Merlin. Now that historians and scholars of medieval literature have gotten past their positivist misgivings about Geoffrey as a purveyor of fact, however, they can draw from the History a sense of the intellectual culture of the early twelfth century, the interaction between Latin and vernacular traditions, and of the very notion of historiography in the High Middle Ages. Because of the cultural richness of Geoffrey's book, there is an obvious need for an accurate text. As is the case with so many popular twelfth-century sources, however, the manuscript tradition (including over 200 extant copies) presents an editor with grave difficulties. The present volume provides the first careful modern edition based on a thorough survey of the manuscripts and is the product of over two decades of work by several scholars.

Since 1985, Boydell and Brewer's D. S. Brewer imprint has published a series of five volumes, all edited or written by Julia Crick or Neil Wright, each of which tackles a discrete problem (The “Historia Regum Britannie” of Geoffrey of Monmouth [Cambridge and Dover, NH: D. S. Brewer, 1985–]). Beginning with an edition based on a single manuscript, the series has produced editions of a “First Variant Version” and a later poetic rendering of the History, as well as two volumes cataloging the manuscripts and summarizing the textual tradition. This work, along with editor Michael Reeve's 1991 article on the transmission of the book (“The Transmission of the Historia Regum Britanniae,” Journal of Medieval Latin 1 [1991]: 73–117), provided the foundations for this fine new edition and translation, which appears in Boydell's Arthurian Studies series.

Reeve's overriding concern, understandably, is fixing the proper text for Geoffrey's book, and thus both introduction and notes offer little in the way of historical commentary. The introduction provides a brief background to the origins of the work, followed by sections on the manuscript evidence for its title, its transmission, the methodology for collating the seventeen manuscripts on which the edition rests, as well as the requisite comments on orthography, punctuation, and the like. The most important conclusions can be briefly summarized. First, Reeve argues convincingly from manuscript evidence that Geoffrey originally titled the work De gestis Britonum, rather than Historia Regum Britanniae, which is nonetheless what is translated in this volume's title. Second, Reeve's research supports the division of the De gestis Britonum into eleven books and 208 chapters, with the separately circulating Prophetiae (“Prophecies of Merlin”) included between books 7 and 8. Third, Geoffrey was responsible for both a single dedication to Robert of Gloucester and a double dedication to Robert and Waleran of Meulan, but manuscripts containing a dedication to King Stephen have a later and corrupt reading. Fourth, Reeve identifies four editorially significant manuscript groupings (from which he reconstructs source manuscripts) from the seventeen he collated based on the conclusions from his 1991 article. Two of these sources, Φ and Δ, are reconstructed in the critical apparatus for the whole work, while a source Π is reconstructed for chapters 100–117 and a source Σ for chapters 118–208. Reeve sensibly avoids arguing too definitively as to Geoffrey's role in the creation of these groups but leaves open the possibility of some early editorial activity by the author that introduced variants into the tradition. The so-called First Variant Version and the Second Variant Version, however, are dismissed as later reworkings by other writers.

The introduction summarizes earlier work but still should be compulsory reading for any graduate student contemplating editorial work on a difficult manuscript tradition. Reeve is refreshingly generous to his material and to his readers in a presentation that inevitably could have veered toward the tedious. He guides the reader through his editorial decisions by providing plenty of evidence and some graceful, even moderately humorous, prose. The only desideratum for this reviewer would have been a succinct paragraph summarizing the conclusions, which could clear away some fog for beginning graduate students. The critical notes, provided before the text and translation, show a masterful command of the nuances of twelfth-century Latin and would be very helpful for students and teachers of medieval Latin grammar and style.

Neil Wright's facing-page translation is smooth, economical, and engaging. It occasionally whittles away some of the semantic richness of a few key words, such as juvenes and juventus, which have meanings related to troops, knights, and youths, but are sometimes translated with the sense of “forces” in situations where the latter senses seem relevant. This, however, is a minor point, and when faced with difficult choices Wright nearly always chooses a lexically defensible rendering. The translation will make the achievement of Reeve's edition all the more accessible to students who are still mastering medieval Latin. This is a handsome volume and a major contribution to twelfth-century British studies. It will provide a firm textual basis for the next generation of scholarly research on Geoffrey of Monmouth and on twelfth-century historiography.