The Middle English poem Piers Plowman survives in nearly sixty manuscripts from the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries.  Handwritten by scribes, each of these presents a unique text of the poem.  

    For more than a century scholars have identified three distinct versions of Piers among these texts, and refer to them as A, B, and C.  Most take these versions as having been composed in that alphabetical order.  In more recent years, arguments have been put forward for a fourth version, called Z, which some consider a distinct version antecedent to A.  And others have identified a subset of B MSS which may also stand as an intermediate stage between B and C.

    The main scholarly editions of A, B, and C are those published under the general editorship of George Kane by The Athlone Press of the University of London (and the University of California Press)
The A Version: Will's Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-well.  Ed. G. Kane, 1960; rev. 1988.
The B Version: Will's Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-well, Do-better and Do-best. Ed. G. Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, 197?; rev. 1988.
The C Version: Will's Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-well, Do-better and Do-best. Ed. George Russell and George Kane, 1997.
    The Z Version has been edited by A. G. Rigg and Charlotte Brewer:
Piers Plowman: The Z Version. Studies and Texts, 59.  Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983.
Piers Plowman : A Facsimile of the Z-Text in Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 851. Cambridge, UK/Rochester, NY, USA: D.S. Brewer, 1994.
    A parallel-text edition of all four versions has been done by A. V. C. Schmidt:
Piers Plowman: A Parallel-text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions.  London: Longman, 1995--.  (Only volume one, containing the texts, has appeared so far; the volume of introduction and notes is forthcoming).
        Schmidt's edition has superseded an older parallel text edition (of the three versions) by Walter W. Skeat:
The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts; together with Richard the Redeless.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886.
    Other editions:
A:  Piers the Plowman: A Critical Edition of the A-Version. Ed. Thomas A. Knott and David C. Fowler.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1952.
B:  The Vision of Piers Plowman. Ed. A. V. C. Schmidt.  London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978.
C:  Piers Plowman: The C-Text.  Ed. Derek A. Pearsall.  London: Edward Arnold, 1978; rpt. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994.
    Translations:
A Version:  
Covella, Sister Francis Dolores.  Piers Plowman: The A-Text: An Alliterative Verse Translation.  Introduction and notes by David C. Fowler.  Binghamton, N.Y. : Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992.
B Version:  
Goodridge, J. F.  Piers the Ploughman. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1966.  (A prose translation.)
Donaldson, E. Talbot. Will's Vision of Piers Plowman. Edited, introduced, and annotated by Elizabeth D. Kirk and Judith H. Anderson.  New York:  W.W. Norton, 1990. (An alliterative verse translation.

Schmidt, A. V. C. Piers Plowman : A New Translation of the B-Text.  The World's Classics. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (A prose translation)

C Version:
Economou, George. William Langland's Piers Plowman: The C Version. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.  (A verse translation.)



(29 Dec 2003)