First edition in English of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legendary History of the Kings of Britain: the first continuous, written account of the deeds of the British people and the book that brought the figure of King Arthur into European literature.

One of the most popular books of the Middle Ages, “Geoffrey's History has been one of the great influences in English literature, making itself especially felt in the national romance from Layamon to Tennyson. Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth have all used his legends, while many of the earlier chroniclers followed him as an historian. But the twelve books of his History, recounting how Brut, great-grandson of Aeneas, founded the kingdom, and narrating the adventures of subsequent kings, are in truth not history at all but the beginning of English story-telling. Among his legends is that of King Arthur, which became the most famous of the great cycles of romance so popular in the Middle Ages. Geoffrey's legend having received a new form from Sir Thomas Malory in the fifteenth century has again been given fresh life by Tennyson in the "Idylls of the Kings". Geoffrey claimed that his work was founded on a "most ancient book" -- probably a collection of British legends no longer extant. His stories exercised a wide influence in Germany, France, and Italy, while England they furthered the unification of the English people by spreading belief in a common origin of Briton, Saxon, and Norman” (Edwin Burton).  "The History was immediately and widely accepted as the definitive account of the course of British history and it remained so for nearly 600 years... It inspired a whole new genre of creative writing which spread very quickly throughout the continent in the form of the Arthurian romance" (Britannia).