William Langland

William Langland is the name traditionally given to the presumed author of Piers Plowman, one of the great alliterative poems of medieval England, on the strength of a fifteenth-century manuscript note naming a “William de Langlond” as its maker.

Little is known of his life beyond what can be inferred from the poem: he seems to have received a clerical education, lived for a time in London, and moved in the world of minor clergy and the poor rather than the court.

Piers Plowman survives in three successive versions (the A, B, and C texts), which Langland appears to have revised and expanded over some twenty years. It follows a dreamer, Will, through a series of visions in search of Do-well, Do-bet, and Do-best — a sweeping allegorical satire of fourteenth-century church and society.