It is also a pleasure and a duty to acknowledge the help received from the librarians of Trinity College, Dublin, and Cardiff Public Library and especially from Sir H. The relatively rapid progress made in the accomplishment of the task was due in large measure to the congenial and scholarly atmosphere at the Institute. J., made the final preparation of this volume possible. The gracious leaves received from the Trustees of Hunter College, New York, and the kind invitation and subvention from the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton, N. It was thanks to the generous grants (and publication subvention) from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies that it was possible to visit the various libraries of Europe and collect the material necessary for the project.
It represents the first fruits of an investigation undertaken many years ago and is preliminary to a critical edition of the Historia, based on all manuscripts known to scholars, the larger portion of which (135 in actual numbers) has already been collated.Ī task of this scope could not have been undertaken without outside assistance. The present edition which offers the first critical text of a Variant Version of the Historia, based on manuscripts that hitherto passed under the name of Geoffrey, is only another step in this advance.
Two years later, in 1929, two editions of Geoffrey appeared, 2 which constitute a real advance over the older, uncritical editions. Critical work on the manuscripts is still in its infancy, and in these circumstances speculation as to the original form of the Historia and any revision which it may have undergone can only be tentative.