British Library Department of Manuscripts: Medieval literary and historical manuscripts in the Cotton Collection

Assembled in the early 17th century by Sir Robert Cotton. The microform reels comprise about 300 volumes of the 1000 volume Cotton collection held in the British Library. They include all primary source manuscripts for British history and English literature to the end of the 15th century (with the exception of texts in the Anglo-Saxon language and some carticularies-which are contained in other microform series.) Reel one contains an index - a list of names. After the index, there is a catalogue of the manuscripts in the Cottonian library. The catalogue goes section by section through the collection (which is still arranged as Cotton arranged it) and describes the contents. Some sections are in Latin, others in English.