Scholarly study of Charles Wesley has been hampered by uneven access to the significant body of verse that he left in manuscript at his death, most of which is still extant. This body of verse includes both manuscript precursors to many items in Wesley’s published collections and over 4,420 distinct new hymns and poems that remained unpublished at his death.

George Osborn included portions of this material in his 13-volume collection of The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley (1868-72). But Osborn did not distinguish between published and manuscript items, which is one of the features of his collection that restricts its adequacy as a standard source.

More recently, S T Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge published a 3-volume collection of Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley (1988-92), which dramatically increased scholarly access to Wesley's manuscript verse. While very helpful, as the title indicates, this collection does not include surviving manuscript drafts for hymns that Charles Wesley published during his lifetime and reproduces manuscript items in Osborn’s collection only if his version is incomplete.

The present online collection of the poetical works of John and Charles Wesley is committed to providing as broad and convenient of access as possible for scholarly study and citation. This subsection of the collection contributes to that goal by presenting all of the known surviving manuscript verse of Charles Wesley (in transcriptions or by notation). It includes the large collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre at The John Rylands University Library in Manchester, England, as well as scattered manuscript items at a number of other sites.