Piers Plowman: A Facsimile of Bodleian Library Oxford, Oxford, MS Douce 104.

This volume presents a full-size facsimile of the only extensively illustrated manuscript of PPl, Bodleian MS. Douce 104, in which a text of the C version of the poem is accompanied by seventy-two marginal illustraions. Derek Pearsall’s introduction (ix-vvx) describes the MS and its contents; its provenance, script, rubrication, and decoration; its abundant annotations; relations between text, corrections, annotations, and illustrations; and finally the position of Douce 104 with respect to other PPl MSS. Kathleen Scott’s catalogue of illustrations (lxvii-lxxxii) appeared in somewhat longer form in YLS 4 (1990): 1-86; it is adapted here “largely verbatim” (xxvii). The introduction and catalogue are followed by Appendix A, “The MSS of PPl” (Pearsall); Appendix B, “MS Douce 104: Decorative Analysis” (Scott); and Appendix C, “A Preliminary List of Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century English MSS with Marginal Illustraions” (Scott). [This annotation from “Notices,” YLS 7 (1993): 176, rather than from the Annual Bibliography.]

Rev. C. David Benson, SAC 16 (1994): 249-51; Phillipa Hardman, MLR 89 (1994): 969-71; Christa Jansohn, Archiv 230 (1993): 425-27; G. A. Lester, ES 75 (1994): 388-90; A. V. C. Schmidt, MAE 63 (1994): 128-30; H. L. Spencer, N&Q 239 (1994): 91; Rev. Thorlac Turville-Petre, RES ns 46 (1995): 555-56..