About The Ricardian

The Ricardian is the research journal of the Richard III Society and is published annually. The 2026 issue is available to all members in the Members’ Area of this website.

Some of the articles in this year’s issue are discussed in a recent issue of The Ricardian Podcast which you can hear on Spotify here; Apple here; RSS here or YouTube here.

Contents for the 2026 Issue:

David Ellison, ‘St Hilda Reimagnined’

Emma Dyson and Eleanor Webb, ‘Collaboration Then and Now: The Digitization, Translation, and Annotation of Free Library of Philadelphia MS Lewis E 201’

Sandra Pendlington, ‘An Interpretation of George Cely’s Letter to Sir John Weston in the Summer of 1482’

Marie Barnfield, ‘”When the Liddisdale men came into England and were sworne to King Richarde”‘

Paul L. Dawson and David Grummitt, ‘Richard III’s Proposed Chapel at Towton Revisited’

Edward Sanders, ‘The Life and Afterlife of the Stanley Family of Elford’

Sophie Bacchus-Waterman, ‘”My cosyn Margarett Keymes”: Katherine Gordon’s Kinship Links to Margaret Kyme’

Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart, ‘To Prove Disabled? The Connection between the 2012 Discovery of Richard III and the Future of Disability History and Ricardian Studies’

Research Notes:

Sylvia Barbara Soberton, ‘The “Deprivation” of Elizabeth Woodville and the Herald’s Memoir‘

J. L. Laynesmith, ‘Sir Edward Brampton’s Baptism’

Members of the Society receive the current year’s volume as a benefit of membership. After five years, issues are available to everyone free online. The journal welcomes scholarly contributions on any aspect of the life and times of Richard III and these are subject to blind peer review. Full details of submission criteria and notes for contributors are available at Ricardian notes for contributors or email the editor at ricardian.editor@richardiii.net.

The current editor is Dr J L Laynesmith (Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading). She is supported by Peter Hammond (Former Society Research Officer), Dr David Grummitt (the Open University), Dr Christopher Tinmouth, and Gabriella Williams (doctoral student at the University of Winchester). The Ricardian was established in 1961 as a quarterly newsletter with historical notes for members of the Richard III Society. In 1974 it became a journal, containing only historical articles and reviews, at which time The Ricardian Bulletin became the Society’s newsletter. Two years later Dr Anne F Sutton took over the editorship from Peter Hammond and she continued in that role until her death in 2022.

The 2023 edition was a special issue of eighteen articles on ‘Yorkist People’, edited in Anne Sutton’s honour by Dr Christian Steer and Professor Caroline Barron. Along with other recent issues, it can be purchased in the Society shop. Since 2002, The Ricardian has been an annual publication. The key articles from the early issues up to 1981 were combined into a separate volume to mark the quincentenary of Richard’s reign: Richard III: Crown and People, edited by James Petre (1985). All the articles were reread and in some instances improved by their authors. It is therefore recommended to the browsers of this site that they consult this volume as well. The articles on Richard III’s books by Anne F Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs which appeared in The Ricardian from 1986 to 1993 formed the basis of their 1997 volume Richard III’s Books: Ideal and Reality in the Life of a Medieval Prince and their articles on royal funerals have also been published separately.

The online scan of The Ricardian volumes 3-25, October 1974 to 2017 was put together by James Petre, Anne F Sutton, Christian Steer and Livia Visser-Fuchs, with technical assistance from Stephen York, Amanda Geary and Stewart Armstrong.