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predecessor, the Camden Society) has since 1838 published scholarly editions of sources—making important, previously unpublished, texts available to researchers.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 a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary.

Today the Society publishes two new Camden volumes each year in association with Cambridge University Press. You’ll find details of recent volumes below.

Accessing the Camden Series Online

The complete Camden Series now comprises over 380 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 from 2022.

A number of volumes are also freely available through British History Online.

Editors of the Camden Series

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 Reader in 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.

Contributing to the Series

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.

If you are a contracted author, please refer to the Camden Style Guidelines when preparing your volume.

New and recently published Camden volumes, 2021-23

Fellows and members of the Society may purchase print copies of these, and other available Camden titles, for £16 per volume by emailing: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

NEW Volume 66: 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.

It contains 152 official letters mostly addressed to the Tangier Committee, the subcommittee of the Privy Council responsible for Tangerine affairs, and Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State for the South.

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.

The Last Days of English Tangier. The Out-Letter Book of Governor Percy Kirke, 1681–1683 is published online and in print by Cambridge University Press (November 2023). To order in print: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

RECENT Volume 65: 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.

La Prinse et mort du roy Richart d’Angleterre, and Other Works by Jehan Creton is now available online and in print from Cambridge University Press (June 2023). To order in print: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Volume 64: The Diary of George Lloyd (1642-1718), edited by Daniel Patterson (November 2022).

Virtually unknown to scholarship, Lloyd’s diary is not a record of notable events. Rather, it is a uniquely quotidian text consisting of regular daily entries documenting the activities and experiences of an individual far removed from great events.

Lloyd’s diary will be an invaluable resource for scholars studying many aspects of early modern English social and cultural history, including sociality, fashion, religious observance, courtship, food and drink, and working life.

The Diary of George Lloyd, 1642-1718 is now available online and in print from Cambridge University Press. To order in print: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Volume 63: Aristocracy, Democracy, and Dictatorship. The Political Papers of the Seventh Marquess of Londonderry, edited by N. C. Fleming (September 2022).

The seventh Marquess of Londonderry (1878–1949) corresponded with the leading political figures of his day, including Winston Churchill (his second cousin), Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald. Londonderry’s amateur diplomacy in the 1930s meant that his regular correspondents also included Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Franz von Papen.

Aristocracy, Democracy, and Dictatorship is now available online and in print from Cambridge University Press. To order in print: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Volume 62: British Financial Diplomacy with North America 1944–1946. The Diary of Frederic Harmer and the Washington Reports of Robert Brand, edited by Michael F. Hopkins (2021)

Volume 61: Sir Earle Page’s British War Cabinet Diary, 1941–1942, edited by Kent Fedorowich and Jayne Gifford (2021). To order in print: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Full Series Lists

• Camden Fifth Series (volumes published from 1993 to the present)
• Camden Fourth Series (1969-1993)
• Camden Third Series (1900-1963)
• Camden New Series (1871-1901)
• Camden Old Series (1838-1872)

The Series was originally published by the Camden Society (established 1838) until its merger with the Royal Historical Society in 1897. The RHS Archive contains papers relating to the Camden Society, 1838-97.

The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is the most comprehensive and accurate guide available to what’s been published in British and Irish history over the past 100 years.

The Bibliography is a joint research and publishing project of the Royal Historical Society, the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, and the Belgian publisher, Brepols. It is edited by staff at the Institute of Historical Research, with specialist academic advisers acting as section editors. 

What does BBIH offer historians of Britain and the British world?

• contains 640,000+ records of books, edited collections, journal articles and book chapters;
• includes details of history publications from the early 1900s to the current year;
• adds regular online updates of c.10,000 new publications each year;
• covers the history of the British Isles, the former empire and Commonwealth, the British world, and Britons’ activities on the global stage, from Roman Britain to the 21st century;
• contains publications relating to British influence in Europe, the trans-Atlantic and informal empire;
• searchable via a range of options. These include: by author, title of publication, subject area, period and places covered, publication type and date/s of publication;
• offers cross-searchability with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, The National Register of Archives and IHR digital resources including Reviews in History and British History Online;

What makes BBIH a key research tool?

• BBIH has been created using systematic and extensive surveys of data on all relevant new publications, including weekly reviews of 800 academic journals and records of new acquisitions by the British Library;
• Provides links to individual publications in your library or a union catalogue, along with links to Google Books, selected on-line book reviews, and full text versions of articles;
• BBIH enables you to create your own comprehensive bibliography on any topic, using a range of a variety export formats (including Refworks and EndNote);
• Generates email updates of new publications relevant to your research interests.

Access or subscribe to BBIH

The Bibliography of British and Irish History is an online subscription service that’s available via a very wide range of UK higher education institutions and research libraries, as well as universities and libraries worldwide.

• For members of subscribing institutions, access is available either via your library’s website or via Brepols’ online portal website: www.brepolis.net;
• Institutions wishing to subscribe to BBIH can obtain a 30-day free trial period, along with a price quotation and details on a licence agreement. One-year trials are now also available with 50% discount; UK institutions are priced according to JISC bandings. For further information, please email: brepolis@brepols.net;
• Individual subscriptions to BBIH are also available, with significant discounts for fellows and members of the RHS. For further enquiries, please email: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

For further information about the Bibliography and its use in research and teaching, see the BBIH pages on the IHR website.

** This Society’s publications can be found in the Royal Historical Society collections in the UCL History Library

IRISH RECORD COMMISSIONERS (1826-1901)

Irish Record Commissioners Publications

IRISH RECORD OFFICE (1861-1958)

Irish Record Office Publications

ROYAL SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF IRELAND **

Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Publications

The Society was founded in 1849 in Kilkenny to preserve examine and illustrate all ancient monuments and memorials of the arts, manners and customs of the past, as connected with the antiquities, language, literature and history of Ireland.

Enquiries to: The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 63 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland; tel: +353 1 676 1749; email: rsai@rsai.ie; http://www.rsai.ie.

“What happens when a Written Constitution is printed? A History across Boundaries”

Professor Linda Colley FBA
Tuesday 8 December 2020

Watch the Lecture

Abstract

From 1750 onwards, the rate at which new constitutions were generated in different countries and continents markedly increased. By the First World War, written and published political devices of this sort already existed in parts of every continent barring Antarctica.

Yet for all the magnitude and diversity of this transformation, the history of written constitutions is often rigidly compartmentalized. Although constitutions spread rapidly across the world’s oceans and land frontiers, they have usually been examined only in the context of individual countries. Although they have been – and occasionally and arguably still are – tools of empire, they are generally interpreted only in terms of the rise of nationalism.  And although these are authored texts, and many of those designing them in the past were engaged in multiple forms of writing, written constitutions have rarely attracted the attention of literary scholars. Instead, these documents have tended to become the province of legal experts and students of constitutional history, itself an increasingly unfashionable discipline in recent decades.

In this lecture, Linda Colley looks at the dense, vital and varied links between constitutions and print culture as a means of resurrecting and exploring some of the trans-national and trans-continental exchanges and discourses involved. She also considers the challenges posed to written constitutions – now embedded in all but three of the world’s countries – by the coming of a digital age.

Linda Colley is Shelby M.C.Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. She was born in the UK, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. She is the author of six books and holds seven honorary degrees. Her latest work, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World, was published in March 2021.

Header Image Credit: Photo by Kim Ludbrook/EPA/Shutterstock (8600528a)A member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party holds a copy of the constitution during a mass protests to the Union Buildings calling for President Zuma to step down, Pretoria, South Africa, 12 April 2017.

Music Credit, closing panel of lecture: 'Dance Of Lovers' Jay Man - OurMusicBox http://www.youtube.com/c/ourmusicbox

‘Script, scribes and scholars: Anglo-Saxon influence in Charlemagne’s Francia’

Professor Joanna Story

(University of Leicester)

Friday 5 May 2023

17.00 BST – in person at the Sir Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building, University College London, and Online

Please see below for directions to the Lecture Theatre

Booking for this event is now available via eventbrite

Abstract

On 25 December 795, Pope Hadrian I died in Rome. Exactly five years later, on 25 December 800, Charlemagne was acclaimed as emperor in St Peter’s basilica and his son, Charles, was crowned as king.

In the intervening years, a large inscription was erected over Hadrian’s tomb in the south transept of the basilica, made of black marble that had been sourced in Francia, with an inscription cut in epigraphic capitals, self-consciously recalling the script of the ancient empire. Its verses proclaim that ‘I, King Charles’ had commissioned the epitaph. In fact, its author was Alcuin, a scholar from York in the kingdom of Northumbria, who had been part of Charlemagne’s inner circle and tutor to his children.

Alcuin is the best known of many English travellers to Charlemagne’s Francia. This lecture uses evidence from contemporary manuscripts to explore influences from the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms on the intellectual culture of Francia in the eighth and earlier ninth centuries. Books written using ‘Insular scripts’ survive in great numbers in European libraries; many were exported in the eighth century or were written on the continent at that time by scribes who had been trained to write and make books in Insular style.

These manuscripts include some of the greatest treasures of medieval European heritage, but many more are utilitarian and much less elaborate. The scripts, decoration and methods of making these manuscripts, as well as their content and context of survival, have much to reveal about the movement of books, ideas and people, and about connectivity between England and Francia in the age of Charlemagne.

Speaker biography

Jo Story is Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester. Her research falls principally within the period 600–900CE, covering the early English kingdoms, Francia, and Italy and connections between them. The material culture of the written word is central to her work using manuscript and epigraphic evidence as well as sculpture, coinage and archaeology.

Jo was lead academic advisor for the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library in 2018–19, and early medieval manuscripts are at the forefront of her research on connections between England and the Continent in the Age of Charlemagne. Jo’s latest book is Charlemagne and Rome. Alcuin and the Epitaph of Pope Hadrian I, published by OUP in June 2023.

How to reach the Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre at UCL

The Lecture Theatre is part of UCL’s Engineering Department which is part of the main UCL campus in Bloomsbury: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/about/getting-here

The Department is reached via the entry to UCL on Tavistock Place (opposite Malet Street and the large Waterstones booksellers).

Entry to the Lecture Theatre is via the building immediately on your left as you head through the gates. This is the Roberts Building and is signed on the door.

You will be asked to confirm the event you’re attending and then be let through the gates to the lecture theatre. The theatre is on the ground floor and is accessed by walking straight on from the gates. From there, the location of the theatre will signed, and there will be RHS staff on hand to guide you.

Booking for this event is now available via eventbrite

More on the Royal Historical Society’s events programme, 2023 >

HEADER IMAGE: Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 496a Helmst., f.1r, c.800 Fulda: CC-BY-SA

RHS staff are available through the week at the Society’s office at University College London. As ever, the best way to keep in touch with the office is via email. Please contact RHS central office staff directly, or use one of the email addresses below.

The Society’s phone will be monitored through the week, so please to leave a message if this is your preferred means of communication. A member of the central team will be in touch as soon as possible. 

Get in touch with us:

• General and non-membership enquiries: please email: administration@royalhistsoc.org
• Membership, Grants or Prizes enquiries: please email: membership@royalhistsoc.org
• Current Fellows and Members enquiries: please email: membership@royalhistsoc.org
• Research & Communications, Social Media and Website enquiries: please email: philip.carter@royalhistsoc.org

Telephone: +44 (0)20 3821 5311: please leave a message if no one is available to take your call.

Write to us at: The Royal Historical Society, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

UCL’s main quad and Library, in which the RHS offices are located, viewed from the Gower Street entrance. South Junction is at the far right of the facade as you approach the Library.

Where to find us

• The Society’s office and Council Room are located in University College London’s main library. We are on the second floor of the Wilkins Building, south side (South Junction) of the UCL main quad. This is where our Council meets and where the Society’s library and archive are housed.

• Most of our London lectures (when held in-person) are held in the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, adjacent to our office on the second floor.

How to reach us

• Nearby underground and mainline stations: Warren Street, Euston Square, Euston, Russell Square, King’s Cross St Pancras
• Nearby bus routes: 10, 14, 24, 29, 73, 134, 390.