In London and Opelond: The Dialect and Circulation of the C Version of Piers Plowman.

This article comprises a detailed analysis of the dialects of five manuscripts of the i-group of the C Version: San Marino, Huntington Library, MS Hm 143 (X), University of London Library, MS S.L. V.88, olim Ilchester (I), the Holloway fragment, now Oslo, Schøyen Collection, MS 1953 (H), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 102 (Y), and London, British Library, MS Additional 35157 (U). The close correlation in their use of forms localizable to the South-West Midlands is explained as the preservation of features of the authorial dialect,  rather than as evidence of the scribes’ own dialects. This leads to the rejection of M. L. Samuels’s view that these manuscripts were copied in the South-West Midlands and the widespread belief that L returned to his native Malvern to revise and release the C version.