50
Pierce Plowman’s visions.
8
vo.
1815 Catalogue, page 147, no. 62, as above.
[LANGLAND,
William.]
The Vision of Pierce Plowman, now
fyrste imprynted by
Roberte Crowley, dwellyng in Ely rentes in Holburne.
Anno Domini
1505 [partly obliterated and 1550 inserted]. Cum priuilegio ad imprimend(
~u) solum. [Colophon:] Imprinted at
London by
Roberte Crowley, dwellyng in Elye rentes in Holburne. The yere of our Lord.
m.d.l.
[1550.]
PR2010 .A1 1550
First Edition. 4to. 120 leaves, the last a blank, printed in black letter, title within an ornamental border, with the sun at the
top, and the cipher of Edward Whitchurch at the foot.
STC 19906.
Dibdin-Ames II, 2414.
Jefferson bought his copy from Samuel Henley; it is one of the books in the list appended to his letter to Henley dated from Paris March 3, 1785, and is in the list made by Jefferson of the books obtained from this purchase.
Three editions of the
Vision of Pierce Plowman, all in quarto, were published in the year 1550, and there is no indication as to which of the three was in Jefferson’s library.
The first edition has been described here from the copy in the Library of Congress. Actually it seems somewhat doubtful that
any one of these early, and quite rare, editions was in Jefferson’s library. The first Library of Congress catalogue to assign
the place and date of printing to all the entries is that of 1839, made almost thirty years after the catalogue of 1815, and
the assignment of editions to Jefferson’s library has been proved at times to be inaccurate.
Jefferson’s entry for this book, followed by that of the 1815 Catalogue, raises the question of the edition. Jefferson’s entries are made always
with the greatest care and accuracy, and it seems improbable that he would have written
Pierce Plowman’s Visions, 8vo, as quoted above, had he meant
The Vision of Pierce Plowman, 4to. Occasionally he mistook a small octavo for a duodecimo, but never an octavo for a quarto.
The Vision of Pierce Plowman was not printed in octavo. The only work in octavo format which includes in the title, the phrase
Pierce Plowman’s Visions (in the plural, as written by Jefferson), is the following:
Four Essays, as Improved and Enlarged in the Second Edition of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Viz. I. On the Ancient
English Minstrels. II. On the Ancient Metrical Romances. III. On the Origin of the English Stage. IV. On the Metre of Pierce
Plowman’s Visions.
m dcc lxvii
. [1767.]
PR1181 .P52
First Edition. 8vo. 30, 16, 10 and 16 leaves, separate titles, signatures and pagination for each essay. The title for the fourth
Essay reads:
Essay the Fourth. On the Metre in the Visions of Pierce Plowman, 1350. Other works by
Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, appear in this Catalogue, q.v.
[4502]
51
Pope’s works by Warburton.
10. v.
12
mo.
1815 Catalogue, p. 147, no. 61. 9 v 12mo.
These volumes may not have been delivered to Congress. The entry is marked
missing in the contemporary working copy of the Library of Congress Catalogue of 1815, and does not appear in the later catalogues.
It is entered in the manuscript list of missing books made at a later date.
Jefferson’s manuscript entry called for ten volumes, and the Library of Congress Catalogue of 1815 for nine volumes, which makes it difficult to determine
which edition was in Jefferson’s library. Warburton’s first edition, in nine volumes 8vo., was published in 1751, and was
followed by nine-volume editions in 1752, 1753, 1754 and 1756, [punct.
sic--
Ed.] In 1757 Warburton published an edition in ten volumes, and later editions in both nine and ten volumes were published. See
the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature II, 194.
