Robert’s Rules of Order is the single most commonly used manual of parliamentary procedure.  The first edition, called Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies was published in 1876 by Henry Martyn Robert, an engineer in the United States Army.  The publisher gave the book the short title Robert’s Rules of Order, and the name stuck.

Robert had decided to learn about parliamentary procedure, and then to write what would become Robert’s Rules of Order, after he had a bad experience in a church meeting in 1863.  The introduction to the 10th edition of Robert’s Rules relates:

Without warning, [Robert] was asked to preside over a meeting, and did not know how.  But he felt that the worst thing he could do would be to decline.  “My embarrassment was supreme,” he wrote.  “I plunged in, trusting to Providence that the assembly would behave itself.  But with the plunge went the determination that I would never attend another meeting until I knew something of…parliamentary law.” (RONR, 10th ed., xxxv)

Since 1876, Robert’s Rules of Order has gone through several editions, from a handful of authors.  Although the first edition was a mere 176 pages, the current 10th edition of Robert’s Rules of Order now contains a whopping 704 pages, including charts, tables, lists, and the index.  Although the rules have remained highly consistent through the years, each successive edition grows because of the attempts of the authorship team to answer questions that previous editions have not addressed adequately.

For beginners who wish to learn parliamentary procedure, the official Robert’s Rules of Order authorship team has produced Robert’s Rules of Order in Brief, a quick, easy introduction to running meetings designed for people who don’t have much time, but need to learn the basics.  The full manual may be purchased here.

An eleventh edition of Robert’s Rules of Order is projected to be released some time in the near future.