SOURCE: “Reception,” in The “Historia Regum Britannie” of Geoffrey of Monmouth: IV, Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages, D. S. Brewer, 1991, pp. 218-26.

In the following excerpt, Crick credits The History of the Kings of Britain with inspiring the composition of other histories and argues that Geoffrey's work circulated widely not because it was accepted as historical fact, but because it served the needs of its readers.

So far this study has largely been concerned with the immediate circumstances in which Geoffrey's History was transmitted, a subject hardly separable from the broader question of how the Historia was regarded and used, which will now be addressed. Works associated with the History provide a starting point for such an investigation.

Thanks to the evidence of test-collations, the original list of associated contents presented in Chapter II can now be sorted: material which was evidently transmitted together with...