Pierce Plowman
16.10.2025 10:00UTC +01:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S| Auctioneer | CHRISTIE'S |
|---|---|
| Veranstaltungsort | Vereinigtes Königreich, London |
| Aufgeld | see on Website% |
ID 1471953
Los 30 | Pierce Plowman
Schätzwert
30000USD $ 30 000 – 50 000
First edition, with contemporary female ownership; the A. Edward Newton copy. With corrected “1505” imprint on title-page and headlines reading "Pierce Plougman".
“What is truly exceptional about Langland is the kind, and the degree, of his poetic imagination” (C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love). Pierce Plowman stands as the most important Middle English poem after Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. A satirical allegory, the 20-part narrative is composed in alliterative verse and details various visions experienced by the central figure, Will. The Alliterative Revival in 14th- and 15th-century England saw a renewed interest in the style of verse that had dominated vernacular poetics in England across the first millennium, but which had fallen out of favor after the Norman Conquest. In the later medieval period, some Middle English poets began experimenting with alliteration once more—a creative project that resulted in a corpus of masterpieces including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Morte Darthur and Pierce Plowman.
Robert Crowley, the printer of the first edition of Pierce Plowman, wrote an introduction to his edition detailing his editorial process which is significant both as an early discussion of textual scholarship as for providing the identification that, to this day, informs the scholarly consensus on the poem’s authorship. Crowley ascribed Pierce Plowman to a previously little-known author then thought to be named Robert but now known as William Langland: “Beynge desyerous to knowe the name of the Autoure of this most worthy worke, (gentle reader) and the tyme of the writynge of the same: I did not onely gather togyther suche aunciente copies as I could come by, but also consult such me[n] as I knew to be more exercised in the studie of antiquities, then I my selfe have ben. And by some of them I have learned that the Autour was named Roberte langelande, a Shropshere man borne in Cleybirie, aboute viii. myles from Malverne hilles.” (p.*2).
Crowley also alerts his readers to Langland’s deviation from rhyme-based meters and embrace of alliteration: “He wrote altogyther in miter: but not after [that] maner of our rimers that write nowe adayes (for his verses ende not alike) but the nature of hys miter is, to have thre wordes at the leaste in euery verse whiche beginne with some one letter.” (p.*2). Altogether, Crowley provides a unique insight into the work of a publisher and editor operating in the first century of printing in England.
A contemporary inscription below Crowley's colophon identifies Anne ?Powre as perhaps the first owner of this copy. Grolier List, 5; Grolier, Langland to Wither, 153; ESTC S110420; STC 19906 (in neither Hayward nor Pforzheimer).
Quarto (190 × 140mm). Title-page with aedicular woodcut border featuring Edward Whitechurch’s cypher (McKerrow, Printers’ & Publishers’ Devices, 108), “1505” imprint date on title-page deleted in ink with “1550.” stamped below, headlines reading “The vision of Pierce Ploughman” (title-page with short marginal repair, B1 with large repair, neat tear in K1, small dampstain in bottom corner of quire 2F). Contemporary English calf with blindstamped ornate border, gilt lettering in rubricated spine compartment, later red edges (rebacked preserving nearly all of the original spine); modern red chemise and slipcase. Provenance: early manuscript annotations in at least two hands – Anne ?Powre (16th-century inscription on final page, “Anne ?Powre the owner of This Bouke fines”) – erased title-page stamp – Alfred Edward Newton, American bibliophile (1864–1940; Oak Knoll bookplate) – Phyllis Goodhart Gordan (1913–1994; leather label); by descent.
| Herkunftsort: | England |
|---|---|
| Kategorie des Auktionshauses: | Gedruckte Bücher |
| Herkunftsort: | England |
|---|---|
| Kategorie des Auktionshauses: | Gedruckte Bücher |
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| Losnummer | 30 |
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| Auktionsdatum | 16.10.2025 |
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| Losnummer | 30 |
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| Auktionshaus | CHRISTIE'S |
| Auktionsdatum | 16.10.2025 |
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| Auktionsdatum | 16.10.2025 |
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| Auktionsdatum | 16.10.2025 |
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| Auktionsdatum | 16.10.2025 |
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| Auktionsdatum | 16.10.2025 |
