Description

Sir Frederick Madden (1801-73) was for thirty years Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Library. His edition of the Latin text of Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorum has never been superseded: as Richard Vaughan wrote in 1958, 'it is one of the finest of all those published in the Rolls Series, and it set a standard of careful accuracy and profound scholarship which has seldom been equalled since'. Matthew Paris, a monk at St Albans Abbey from 1217 to 1259, wrote and illustrated the single complete surviving manuscript of this 'English History', which covers the years 1067-1253. He was an accomplished artist and a racy, indefatigably curious and opinionated narrator of events. Volume 3, prefaced by a biography of the author, contains the conclusion of the work from 1246 to 1253, and an abbreviated version composed by Paris himself.