Oliver Cromwell is one of the most studied of Englishmen. He captures the popular imagination as few others and he is one of the ten most instantly recognizable. Non-apocryphally, an Irish Prime Minister would not enter the office of a British Secretary of State because Cromwell’s portrait was on the wall. Questions of public understanding, and in the case of Ireland, of reconciliation, remain. In the past 25 years alone, his name has appeared in more than one hundred titles in the British History Online Database. All 100 rely on poor, unreliable, or out-of-date editions.

This project aims to publish a new critical edition of the writings and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. The five volumes will be published by Oxford University Press. Volumes 1-3 will publish Cromwell's letters and speeches in chronological order with contextual information and full critical apparatus. Volumes 4-5 will be companion volumes with a series of multi-authored essays, a chronology of Cromwell’s life, maps, genealogies, and other appendices. Work commenced on this two year Leverhulme Trust funded project in July 2011.