It has been a half-century since the last major work on the Collège de la Sorbonne appeared, namely Palémon Glorieux's Aux Origines de la Sorbonne. Since then there have been numerous articles on Robert de Sorbon or his college by Richard Rouse, André Tuilier, Nicole Bériou, Astrik Gabriel and Nathalie Gorochov, but not another book-length study of the early years of the college until now. After an introduction that discusses the sources, particularly the cartulary and the biography of Robert, Gabriel's book is divided into three parts. The first part, on biographical details, covers the origin, education and ecclesiastical formation of Robert up to 1250. The author accepts the view that Robert received his early education at the cathedral school at Reims, although he grants the less-likely possibility that Robert was initially trained at the Premonstratensian canonry at Dyonne. He also accepts Glorieux's dating of Robert's theological studies at Paris (c. 1221–36), which was based on the programme as described in fourteenth-century statutes rather than those of 1215. It is uncertain whether two years of biblical lectures and lectures on the Sentences were required before the late 1230s, and the assumption that they were makes the dating of Robert's course of study also conjectural. Gabriel follows the modification of Glorieux's list of occupants of fixed teaching chairs in theology suggested in M.-M. Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour (Paris 1972), which divided the supposedly limited number of chairs for secular masters between three positions occupied by canons of Notre-Dame and another six being regional: Italy, Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, Anglo-Norman and Flanders, and arguing that several masters could teach simultaneously under one chair, or shift from one chair to another. The second part is on the foundation of the college, or ‘domus’. This section goes through the founding documentation in the cartulary, especially the role of the French king and popes Alexander iv, Urban iv and Clement iv. The author discusses the various means by which Robert acquired buildings in the 1250s and explores the importance of topographical proximity to other foundations in the region of rue St-Jacques. He also notes that many of the first group of fellows were personally known to Robert, and that many, indeed most of the donors came from the north of France. The third part of the book concerns life in the college during the remainder of Robert's life when he held the office of provisor. The statutes and the rules of communal living are discussed, along with relations between the college and the external world, and what poverty meant to the founder and members of the college. The book concludes with the earliest statutes, drafted around 1270, and the papal confirmation of the founding of the college by the letter of Clement iv in 1268. As Gabriel himself acknowledges, there are no new pieces of biographical information or new sources that change the received picture of Robert, the foundation of the college, or its early years. The college was a joint achievement of Robert and King Louis ix, with papal recognition from Alexander iv, despite the latter's favouring of the mendicant orders.