The vision of Pierce Plowman, newlye imprynted after the authours olde copy, with a brefe summary of the principall matters set before every part called Passus. Whereunto is also annexed the Crede of Pierce Plowman, never imprinted with the booke before.
London: Imprynted by Owen Rogers, 21 February, 1561.
Price: $22,500.00
Quarto: 18 x 14 cm. 256 pp. Collation: †2, A-Z4, Aa-Hh4, Ii2. quires Ff and Gg are bound in reverse.
FOURTH EDITION. The final 16th c. edition. No further editions appeared until the 19th c.
Bound in 17th c. blind-ruled calf, rebacked in the 20th c., with fleuron tools at the corners of the boards (hinges repaired). A fine copy internally with a small worm-trail deep in the gutter; clear damp-stain to leaves M-O Gathering with slight blur at the head of three leaves. Gathering Gg lightly browned. Short, clean tear in margin of leaf Cc2, not entering the text. With 17th or 18th c. marginal annotations, mostly glossing archaic words in the text. 17th c. inscription on front endpaper, "S. Sanders ex dono D. Shelmerdine 1681". Bookplate of Waldo C. Bryant (1863-1930).
Fourth and final 16th c. edition, preceded by three editions of 1550, all published by Robert Crowley. No new edition was printed until the 19th century. As in almost all known copies, the "Crede" announced on the title-page is not present; it has no real connection with the Vision, and, printed in the fourth year of Elizabeth’s reign, with glosses that called attention to points of Protestant interest: "Minorites or gray freres," "Minorites," "The augustine freres," "The ploughman," "Caym," "Wicleffe," "Water Brute," "The Creed", it was probably suppressed because of its Wycliffite tendencies. It survives in only about half a dozen copies of the present edition. Of the 15 copies of this edition held in U.S. institutions, the "Crede" is preserved in only 4 (Yale, Huntington (2), and Morgan.). See Pforzheimer.
"Few poems of the Middle Ages have had a stranger fate than those grouped under the general title of "The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman." Obviously very popular in the latter half of the fourteenth century, the time of their composition, they remained popular throughout the fifteenth century, were regarded in the sixteenth by the leaders of the Reformation as an inspiration and a prophecy, and, in modern times, have been quoted by every historian of the fourteenth century as the most vivid and trustworthy source for the social and economic history of the time. ...
"The author, William Langland, was born circa 1332 at Cleobury Mortimer and educated in the school of the Benedictine monastery in the Malvern hills. Whether he was the son of freemen (Skeat’s view) or of serfs (Jusserand’s view), he was, at any rate, educated for the church and probably took minor orders; but, because of his temperament, his opinions, his marriage, or his lack of influential friends, he never rose in the church. At some unknown date, possibly before 1362, he removed to London.
"‘Piers the Plowman’ consists of three visions supposed to come to the author while sleeping beside a stream among the Malvern Hills. The first of these, occupying the prologue and passus (cantos) I–IV, is the vision of the field full of folk—a symbol of the world—and Holy Church and Lady Meed; the second, occupying passus V–VIII, is the vision of Piers the Plowman and the crowd of penitents whom he leads in search of Saint Truth; the third, occupying passus IX–XII, is a vision in which the dreamer goes in search of Do-well, Do-better and Do-best. In the A version of the poem, Piers is attacked by hunger and fever and dies ere his quest is accomplished. In the B-text [the text used for the early printed editions] the author replaces the imaginary account of Piers’ death with a continuation of the vision of Do-well, Do-better and Do-best longer than the whole of the original version of the poem." (John Matthews Manly)
"Because of the large number of manuscripts, it is clear that ‘Piers Plowman’ was exceptionally popular and widely disseminated in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It first became available in printed form in 1550 when Robert Crowley published his edition of the B-text [the considerably longer version of the poem, as opposed to the ‘A-text’]. Because Crowley’s edition was based on a B-text manuscript which is now lost, it is extremely valuable to modern editors. … After Owen Rogers’ 1561 edition, no edition of ‘Piers Plowman’ was printed for more than two hundred years." (Colaianne).
ESTC S114908; STC 19908; Hayward 12; Pforzheimer 799