The Brut Chronicle, also known as the Prose Brut, is the collective name of a number of medieval chronicles of the history of England. The original Prose Brut was written in Anglo-Norman; it was subsequently translated into Latin and English.

The first Anglo-Norman versions end with the death of King Henry III in 1272; subsequent versions extend the narrative. Fifty versions in Anglo-Norman remain, in forty-nine manuscripts, in a variety of versions and stages. Latin translations of the Anglo-Norman versions remain in nineteen different versions, which fall into two main categories; some of those were subsequently translated into Middle English. There are no fewer than 184 versions of the English translation of the work in 181 medieval and post-medieval manuscripts, the highest number of manuscripts for any text in Middle English except for Wycliffe's Bible. The sheer number of copies that survive and its late-fourteenth century translation into the vernacular indicating the growth in common literacy; it is considered "central" to the literary culture of England in the Late Middle Ages.

As well as the Prose Brut there are also a number of Welsh versions of Geoffrey's Historia, collectively known as Brut y Brenhinedd.

Originally a legendary chronicle written in Anglo-Norman in the thirteenth century (identified by the fact that some existing copies finish in 1272), the Brut described the settling of Britain by Brutus of Troy, son of Aeneas, and the reign of the Welsh Cadwalader. In this, it was itself based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's text from the previous century. It also covered the reigns of many kings later the subject of legend, including King Cole, King Leir (the subject of Shakespeare's play, King Lear), and King Arthur, and exists in both abridged and long versions. Early versions describe the country as being divided, both culturally and politically, by the River Humber, with the southern half described as "this side of the Humber" and "the better part". Having been written at a time of division between crown and nobility, it was "baronial in its sympathies". It was probably originally composed "at least in part" by clerks in the Royal chancery, although not as an official history. It later became a source for monastic chronicles. Popular already in its early incarnations, it may even have limited the circulation of rival contemporary histories.

The Brut underwent various revisions over the centuries, and from 1333 material inflected from a mid-thirteenth century poem, Des Grantz Geanz, describing the settlement of England (as Albion), had entered the main versions. Eventually, along with the Polychronicon, it was one of the most popular political and secular histories of fourteenth-century England, with the latest-known version ending with events from 1479.

English editions appeared from the early 15th century, particularly the so-called Long version and its various continuations. This^{[further explanation needed]} has become known as the "Common" version, and was probably transcribed in Herefordshire. A later fifteenth-century version consists of the Common versions with "a major one" concluding in 1419, occasionally with the addition of prologues and epilogues. The 16th century also saw an abridged version, created from the major fifteenth-century copies.

It was primarily of interest to the upper-gentry and the English nobility, but, the more it got added to and altered, so it became noticed by other sectors of society. Firstly the clergy, for whom it was translated into Latin, and then into the more accessible French and then English for the lower gentry and mercantile classes. It was thus available to much of English society; certainly, as Andrea Ruddock has said, to the entire political class. And, since it only took "one literate person to make a text available to an entire household", its circulation could have been even broader. Similarly, there are vast differences in the quality of the surviving manuscripts, and Julia Marvin has suggested that this reflects their "diverse ownership and readership". It has been described as "a tremendous success", and one of the most-copied chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A version produced in York in the later fourteenth century was based on official contemporary records, and contains, for example, an eye-witness account of the Good Parliament of 1376. The post-1399 versions are notable by their clear pro-Lancastrian bias and focus on King Henry V's victories in France, for example at Rouen, for the purposes of propaganda. However, even these later versions still contained much of the earlier legendary material, such as that of Albina; indeed, the prose versions have been described as being "enthusiastic" in its rendition of these aspects of English history. It has also been described as "one of the best records of rumours and propaganda, if not of the event themselves."

There are fifty versions in Anglo-Norman, in forty-nine manuscripts, in various versions and stages. There are Latin translations of the Anglo-Norman versions in nineteen different versions, which fall into two main categories; some of those were subsequently translated into Middle English. There are no fewer than 184 versions of the English translation of the work in 181 medieval and post-medieval manuscripts, the highest number of manuscripts for any text in Middle English except for Wycliffe's Bible. From the fifteenth century there is "an amorphous, heterogenous group" of texts which are composed of individuals' notes and preliminary workings of various areas of the Brut. The English edition made it the first chronicle to be written in the vernacular since the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.