‘Piers Plowman’: The A Version

This is the first classroom edition of the A version since Thomas A. Knott and David C. Fowler’s of 1952 (of which this is ‘in many important respects a child’ [p. 5]), and the first modern edition not to attribute the poem to WL. Vaughan’s text, based on Bodleian MS Rawlinson 137 (MS R), is accompanied by ample glossing of difficult Middle English words. The introduction includes a narrative summary of the poem, an overview of the controversies over the authorship of the versions of Piers Plowman, textual notes, detailed endnotes, and a select bibliography frame the text.