William Langland: Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A B, B, C and Z Versions. Volume One, Text.

Texts of the four versions printed in parallel, based on the following manuscripts: Trinity College, Cambridge, MS. R.3.14 (A text); Trinity College, Cambridge, MS. B.15.17 (B text); Huntington Library MS. 143 (C text); Bodley 851 (Z text). An appendix to the text prints what appears to be a six-line B-text revision treating Clement the Cobbler found in some A-text manuscripts, and the text of the Ophni-Phineas passage (C.Prol.104-24) as it appears in the Ilchester manuscript in a form substantially different from all others. Appendices to the apparatus present (1) all rejected readings of the base manuscript where those readings stand alone or are supported by up to three other manuscripts not constituting a genetic group; and (2) a list of words the spelling of which has been altered on metrical grounds, most often by the addition of final -e (and occasionally by the doubling of the consonant preceding the final -e or by substitution of an expanded form [e.g., heued for hed]).

Rev. J. A. Burrow, TLS, 8 December 1995: 23; Robert Adams, YLS 10 (1996): 203-12; Charlotte Brewer, MAE 65 (1996): 286-93; Anne Hudson, RES 47 (1996): 558-59; George Kane, N&Q 43 (1996): 315-21; Ralph Hanna III, SAC 19 (1997): 294-99; Derek Pearsall, Speculum 72 (1997): 517-18; C. David Benson, Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen 235 (1998): 422-26; Ian Robinson, Cambridge Quarterly 22 (1998): 235-49.