The fifty-plus manuscripts of Piers Plowman have always posed a puzzle to scholars. This book is an account of the editions of the poem that have appeared since 1550, when it was first published by the protestant reformer Robert Crowley. It examines the circumstances in which the editions were produced, the lives and intellectual motivations of the editors, and the relationship between one edition and the next. It uses a wide range of published and unpublished material to shed light on attempts to crack one of the major editorial conundrums in medieval studies.
