LANGLAND, William; WHITAKER, Thomas Dunham (trans.).

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Visio Willi de Petro Plouhman, First edition of the first recognised scholarly edition of this seminal medieval poem. Printed in blackletter in black and red, and decorated with elaborate engraved initials and vignette tailpieces, this edition combines an early critical lens with beautiful typography.Whitaker (1759-1821) was a topographer, antiquary, and vicar of Whalley in Lancashire from 1809. His forward-looking critical apparatus includes a modern paraphrase of each page, notes on the text, and a scholarly introduction. He also reproduces the orthography and letterforms of his source manuscripts. Whitaker prefigures the widespread application of these features to medieval English texts following the Early English Text Society in 1864 and considerably augments previous editions of the poem. His edition, however, is also antiquarian in outlook, being printed in blackletter and with rubrication to style. He also "carefully suppressed all the passages relating to the indecent lives and practices of the Romish Clergy" (Lowndes III, p. 1467), adapting the poem's satire of medieval Catholicism to 19th-century Anglican tastes. The poem, known best today as Piers Plowman, is an alliterative narrative poem written in Middle English around 1380 by a Shropshire clergyman. It is a theological allegory and a satire of the 14th century church, which follows the narrator's quest for true Christian living. Whitaker's edition attributes the poem to Robert Langland, but modern scholarship c

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