This year the Society publishes three new volumes in its Camden series of scholarly editions of primary sources. The first two volumes are published in June and August and will be available online and in print from Cambridge University Press.
VOLUME 68: The Papers of Admiral George Grey, edited by Michael Taylor (June 2025)
The Papers of Admiral George Grey presents the memoir, journal, and correspondence of George Grey, son of the Whig prime minister Earl Grey.
The volume documents the Grey family’s experience of the Whig ministry of 1830–1834, and George Grey’s own naval career which took him from the Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence, to a decisive survey of the Falkland Islands, and then to the capital cities of South America during their pivotal early decades of independence
In doing so, the volume sheds new light on the political, diplomatic, naval, and imperial histories of the early and mid-nineteenth century.
The Papers of Admiral George Grey is published online and in print by Cambridge University Press (from June 2025). Due to a subvention from the Society, this volume will be available fully open access.
VOLUME 69: The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541), edited by Helen Newsome-Chandler (August 2025)
This volume presents the surviving holograph correspondence of Margaret Tudor, queen of Scots (1489–1541) as a stand-alone edition for the first time.
The 111 holograph letters (written in Margaret’s own hand) and 4 ‘hybrid’ letters (written by a scribe, with a postscript or subsection by Margaret herself) form an unprecedented epistolary archive, featuring the largest collection of holograph correspondence written in English or Scots of any medieval or early modern queen.
The letters chart Margaret’s life as a late medieval queen, including the challenges she faced in negotiating her dual identity as queen of Scots and an English princess, and her important role in Anglo-Scots politics and diplomacy in the early sixteenth century.
The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541), is published online and in print by Cambridge University Press (from August 2025).
The third and final Camden volume published in 2025 — A Collector Collected: The Journals of William Upcott, 1803-1823, edited by Mark Philp, Aysuda Aykan and Curtis Leung — is published in November.
Recent volumes in the Camden series
Recent volumes in the series include:
The Household Accounts of Robert and Katherine Greville, Lord and Lady Brooke, at Holborn and Warwick, 1640-1649, edited by Stewart Beale, Andrew Hopper and Ann Hughes (November 2024).
- Robert Greville, 2nd Lord Brooke, was a prominent figure amongst the opposition to Charles I, a religious radical and intellectual who emerged as a successful popular leader in the early months of the English Civil War. This volume publishes the richly detailed household accounts kept for Brooke and his widow, Katherine, on an annual basis between 1640 and 1649.
Allen Leeper’s Letters Home, 1908–1912. An Irish-Australian at Edwardian Oxford, edited by David Hayton (July 2024).
- Allen Leeper, Oxford undergraduate and future Foreign Office mandarin, wrote regularly to his family in Australia from 1908 until he left university in 1912. Leeper’s letters, in Balliol College archives and the State Library of Victoria, record his experiences at Balliol, among a ‘golden generation’ decimated by the First World War, and on his extensive travels in Europe. They provide a vivid picture of a continent on the eve of war, written by someone whose background afforded a degree of objectivity.
The Last Days of English Tangier. The Out-Letter Book of Governor Percy Kirke, 1681–1683, edited by John Childs (November 2023).
- Governor Percy Kirke’s Out-Letter Book, here transcribed verbatim and annotated, covers the terminal decline of English Tangier, ending just before the arrival of Lord Dartmouth’s expedition charged with demolishing the town and evacuating all personnel. In 152 official letters, Kirke’s correspondence traces the decay of both the town’s military fabric and the soldiers’ morale and effectiveness, and the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory modus vivendi with the leaders of the besieging Moroccan armed forces.
La Prinse et mort du roy Richart d’Angleterre, and Other Works by Jehan Creton, edited and translated by Lorna A. Finlay (June 2023).
- Jehan Creton accompanied Richard II on his expedition to Ireland in 1399 and witnessed his capture by Henry Lancaster, who usurped the throne to reign as Henry IV. Creton’s account is of crucial importance for historians of the period, as he contradicts the official version of events in the Parliamentary Roll. This a completely new translation of the work, correcting the previous edition dating from 1824. This new Camden edition also includes Creton’s other known writings, the two epistles and four ballades.
Introductions to these and other recent Camden volumes are available from their editors via the Society’s blog.
About the Camden series
The Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series is one of the most prestigious and important collections of primary source material relating to British History, including the British empire and Britons’ influence overseas.
The Society (and its predecessor, the Camden Society) has since 1838 published scholarly editions of sources—making important, previously unpublished, texts available to researchers. Each volume is edited by specialist historians who provide an expert introduction and commentary.
The complete Camden Series now comprises over 385 volumes of primary source material, ranging from the early medieval to late-twentieth century Britain. The full series is available via Cambridge Journals Online, providing an extraordinarily rich conspectus of source material for British history as well as insights into the development of historical scholarship in the English speaking world.
Full online access to all Camden Series titles is available to all Fellows and Members of the Royal Historical Society as part of the Society’s Member Benefits.
The Camden Series is edited by Dr Richard Gaunt (University of Nottingham) and Professor Siobhan Talbott (Keele University).
Richard is Associate Professor in History at the University of Nottingham, with expertise in the political and electoral history of late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. Siobhan is Professor of Early Modern History at Keele University, with research expertise in the economic and social history of Britain and the Atlantic World. Both have extensive experience of preparing and publishing scholarly editions of primary texts.
Richard and Siobhan welcome submissions for future Camden volumes. If you have a proposal for a Camden Society volume, please complete and submit the Camden Series Proposal Form and send your completed proposal to the Editors: camden.editors@royalhistsoc.org.