Archive of Featured Resources in The Robbins Library

Essentially, the Patrologia Latina published by Jacques-Paul Migne (1800-1875) contains all the then available published writings of Latin ecclesiastical authors ranging from the second century to Pope Innocent III (c. 1160-1216). Relying on a clever system of subscriptions, and on an aggressive publicity campaign through the publication of prospectuses and newspaper articles, Migne managed to publish this vast Latin corpus in two series spanning twenty years.Whereas Migne is best remembered for the multi-volume collections of the Latin and Greek patrologies,  in fact he began his professional career as a journalist, being often in charge of several newspapers at a time.

The Rolls of Parliament were the official records, compiled and kept by clerks appointed by the crown, of the meetings of the English parliament from the reign of Edward I up to the reign of Henry VII. Afterwards, the rolls were superseded by the journals of the two houses of parliament, that is the House of Lords and, later on, the House of Commons. Both editions of the parliament documents, the eighteenth-century Rotuli parliamentorum (1767-1777) and the 2005 edition, begin with the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), which, according to scholars, is the first reign when any records of parliament proceedings were kept in official custody.

The 253 volumes of the Rolls Series, containing a total of 99 works, were published in London between 1858 and 1911. While the main focus of this collection is the editing of medieval chronicles, it also includes a significant number of letters, treaties, charters, poems, and sagas. Most of the texts illustrate the history of England, but there is also material related to other parts of the British Isles. In a strict chronological order,  the electronic  Index to the Rolls Series lists these 99 works, including a very useful description of the content of each of these titles.