SOURCE: Levy, F. J. “The Making of Camden's Britannia.” Bibliotheque ‘d Humanisme et Renaissance 26 (1964): 70-97.

In the following essay, Levy details Camden's antiquarian methods in compiling the Britannia, considering Camden's work as an attempt to reconstruct the history of Roman Britain as well as an effort to bring a Continental European mode of scholarship to bear on British history.

In 1586, a thirty-five-year-old schoolmaster named William Camden published an historical and geographical description of the British Isles entitled Britannia. The book was to be immensely successful: six editions in Latin, each one larger than the previous, were published in England during the author's lifetime; and there were continental editions as well. An English translation, made with the help of the author, appeared in 1610, and was reprinted in 1637; a new edition was published in 1695, and was reprinted several times during the eighteenth century; and still another edition appeared in 1789, with...