Piers Plowman: The A Version Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well, Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well, An Edition in the Form of Trinity Colkge Cambridge MS R.3.14. Corrected from Other Manuscripts, with Variant Readings. Piers Plowman: The Three Versions, vol. 1. Rev. ed., vol. 1. Rev. ed.

The text is unchanged except for correction of typological errors and for some repunctuation. Description of the manuscripts incorporates comments from the review of the first edition by A. I. Doyle, ES 43 (1962): 55-59. In “The A Text in 1988” (459-63), notes four manuscripts containing the A text not noticed in the original edition. Proposes nine emendations to the A Text as printed, where the direction of variation, and hence originality, is now apparent. Proposes emendations to twenty-nine lines causa metri, with a better understanding of the quality of archetypal manuscripts, or with indications of B or BC or C readings. Finds paleographical support for one metrical emendation. Notes six lines where comparison with B or BC or C indicates that an unmetrical, evidently archetypal A reading should be emended. Proposes emendations of two lines (7.48, 8.168), which are unmetrical in all archetypes, based on lexicographical information. Concludes that WL used a scribally corrupt A manuscript for his B version. The first edition was published by the Athlone Press, 1960.

Rev. George D. Economou, Envoi 1 (1989): 431-32; E. G. Stanley, N&Q ns 36 (1989): 363-66; Phillipa Hardman, MLR 85 (1990): 910-12; Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith, YLS 4 (1990): 151-54; A. V. C. Schmidt, RES ns 42 (1991): 436-37.