Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2011
Hadrian's Wall studies owe a great debt to those who raised the flag of revolution in 1848. They forced John Collingwood Bruce to abandon his planned holiday in Rome and visit Hadrian's Wall instead. Although he is known to have visited the Wall as a boy, a student, and a young man, now, at the age of forty-two, Bruce commenced the study by which his name is principally remembered. Bruce's Handbook to the Roman Wall remains the primary academic guide to Hadrian's Wall. Four successive editors, and now myself, the sixth including Bruce, have revised — or are revising — the Handbook in ten editions since Bruce's death: thirteen editions so far. This discussion flows from the work of editing the new edition of the Handbook, which is due to be published in 2004, and of considering the contributions of the successive editors.