SOURCE: An introduction to The “Historia Regum Britannie” of Geoffrey of Monmouth: II, The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition, edited by Neil Wright, D. S. Brewer, 1988, pp. xi-cxvi.

In the following excerpt, Wright provides an overview of the First Variant version of The History of the Kings of Britain.

The First Variant Version of the Historia Regum Britannie: Contents, Date, and Authorship

In 1951 Jacob Hammer published—albeit in seriously mangled form—a text of the Historia Regum Britannie which differed considerably from that hitherto regarded as the standard version of Geoffrey's Historia.¹ Hammer referred to the former as the First Variant version² and to the latter as the vulgate, terms which have since gained general acceptance among Galfridian scholars. Yet despite this agreement, basic questions concerning the genesis of the First Variant version have, since the appearance of Hammer's edition, elicited widely divergent responses from his critics...