[1] Volume 1 Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy Ywain and Gawain Launfal Volume 2 Lybeaus Disconus The Geste of Kyng Horn The King of Tars, and the Soudan of Damas Emare Sir Orpheo Chronicle of England Volume 3 Le Bone Florence of Rome The Erle of Toulous The Squyer of Lowe Degre The Knight of Curtesy, and the Fair Lady of Faguell Notes [including an edition of Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild] Glossary Up to this point only three complete Middle English romances had appeared in scholarly editions: Golagrus and Gawain and The Awntyrs of Arthure had been published by John Pinkerton, and Launfal by George Ellis.
Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, arguably the ultimate source of inspiration for Ritson's collection, did not include any mediaeval romance in full, and only the synopsis of Lybeaus Disconus.
[5][6] Apart from being a literary scholar Ritson was also a spelling-reformer, and in all the editorial matter of the Romanceës he adopted his own system of "etymological" spelling, a fact which was to deter readers and be seized on by hostile reviewers.
He rejects not just Warton's theory that romance was a literary form that came to Europe from the Islamic world, but also the contentions of others that it came from the Celtic countries or from Scandinavia, concluding that its true point of origin was France.
[11] The Dissertation is piled high with relevant information, much of it new, but his theses are not always coherently developed, so that at times, as Monica Santini says, "the only thread of his argument is the continuous harrying of Warton".
A delay of several months was caused by the discovery of a number of derogatory comments about the Christian religion in Ritson's text, which the publishers, G. and W. Nicol, insisted should be removed, but the three volumes eventually appeared in October 1802.
[16] Ritson's book bleakly anticipated its own financial and critical failure: The editour abandons it to general censure, with cold indifference, expecting little favour, and less profit; but certain, at any rate, to be insulted by the malignant and calumnious personalitys of a base and prostitute gang of lurking assassins, who stab in the dark, and whose poison'd daggers he has allready experience'd.
[20] Walter Scott, in the Edinburgh Review, was more friendly: Let it be remembered to his honour, that, without the encouragement of private patronage, or of public applause; without hopes of gain, and under the certainty of severe critical censure, he has brought forward such a work on national antiquities, as in other countries has been thought worthy of the labour of universities, and the countenance of princes.