Smash hit

He was not to know that Grattan’s edition of the A-text, interrupted by the war years, and Mitchell’s of the C-text, both of which he hoped would be “in print within the next three years”, would not materialise, and that a far greater editorial venture lay ahead. For now he was set upon editing the B-text, with Skeat’s chosen basic manuscript, Laud Miscellany 581, as his base text.

Already he recognised problems, not least that although the B-texts seem comparatively error-free, the B-archetype having many errors common to all the B-manuscripts; and for these the C-text tradition held valuable evidence. He stated the desirability of bringing to his editorial task the methods and insights on the principles of editing practised in New Testament and Commedia scholarship, and he foresaw that the B-text would be edited not from the B manuscripts alone but from the forty or so B and C manuscripts together. But as Kane continued with collations for the B-text he was to realise that to edit B he would also need the text of A.

Piers Plowman: the A version, Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well, the first of the three great volumes of the Athlone Press edition, appeared in 1960. For this Kane had himself undertaken a new classification of the 17 manuscripts surveyed, prepared full collations and established his text not through the straitjacket of recension but by drawing on conjectural emendation (a procedure discussed succinctly in his 1969 contribution to the memorial volume for Garmonsway). The edition won the Gollancz prize in 1963.

Meanwhile work had continued on the preparation of the B-text, from 1950 with the help of E. Talbot Donaldson (Yale University), and together they completed Piers Plowman: the B Version, Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best (1975). The sub-title alone, “An edition in the form of Trinity College Cambridge MS. B.15.17, corrected and restored from the known evidence, with variant readings”, reveals that they had abandoned even Skeat’s base text. The volume won immediate acclaim.

The third volume, edited with George Russell (Melbourne University), the C-text collaborator recruited by Mitchell, was published in 1997, and as a mark of his achievement in completing the editing of Piers Plowman Kane was in 1999 awarded the Gollancz prize for a second time.

For Kane, however, the task was not complete until he got to press in 2005 his glossary for the English vocabulary of the three Athlone volumes.

The impact of Kane’s editorial and critical work was wide-reaching, and his influence continues to be important in Middle English scholarship. As the Athlone edition progressed, new student editions of Piers Plowman were already benefiting from his discoveries and procedures.

There were quibbles, of course, but these paled beside the simple fact that a century had passed since Chambers and Grattan published the first results of their work on Piers Plowman and at last Skeat’s parallel texts of 1886 had been superseded.

Along the way, Kane found time to write perceptively on a range of medieval literature and to join and supervise much leading scholarly work. His Oxford DNB entry on William Langland (2004) demonstrated clearly the admiration and affection Piers Plowman inspired in him and which he communicated so effectively to others.

In his last years Kane and his wife Bridget returned to England. Living in Sussex and then in Kent, he was a welcome figure at seminars and lectures in the University of London.

Kane is survived by Bridget, his wife of 62 years, and their daughter. Their son Michael died in 1998.

Professor George Kane, medievalist, was born on July 14, 1916. He died on December 27, 2008, aged 92