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- Simon Horobin, Yearbook of Langland Studies 25 (2011): in press207-10: "In this short but densely-argued and provocative book, Lawrence Warner revisits many of the foundations upon which the text of Piers Plowman and its versions have been constructed, arguing that ‘the earliest production and transmission of Piers Plowman were nothing like what we have assumed’ (2).... This book represents a major challenge to Piers Plowman textual scholarship and a welcome opportunity to re-examine many long-held beliefs."
- Noelle Phillips, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 38 (2012): 131-35: "This slim volume is densely packed and contains an energetic, focused, and ambitious argument that inverts the long-established narrative of Piers Plowman’s A to B to C transmission ... Warner’s argument is elegantly expressed and eminently persuasive. ... While I have no doubt that there will be negative responses to this admittedly controversial position, the naysayers will have to do more than generalize about the nature of Piers Plowman and its transmission if they wish to poke holes in the 'lost history' that Warner proposes. This book is an admirable work of scholarship and one that will, I am certain, be a key contributor in the critical future of Piers Plowman."
- Míċeál F. Vaughan, SHARPNews 21.1 (Winter 2012): 14: "Like the apple cast by Eris among the guests at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Warner's book will, deservedly, set off fundamental debates about what the B version looked like in its authorial original, whenever and wherever that came into being. ... Warner's energetic and muscular argument directly attacks basic presumptions about editing the distinct poems that go under the title Piers Plowman. He sets out the case for a thorough revision of the late-fourteenth-century 'editions' of Piers Plowman, employing densely presented details and sharp logic to ground questions about critical and editorial assumptions. He undermines a century and a half of editing, and the critical commentary that depends on it, and his small book will mark a threshold in the study of this important Middle English work. It may take more than 10 years to resolve the dispute set off here. Like Homer's Iliad, Langland's Piers Plowman is worthy of repeated reconsideration. Warner's book has significantly shifted the terms for its next stage."
- Thomas J. Farrell, Textual Cultures 6.1 (2011): 149-52: "most of the energy in The Lost History of "'Piers Plowman"' goes to persuade us that we must address the problem of cross-version affiliation. So far it succeeds: the evidence about what Piers is has moved, or must move."