An Epitome of Earl Rivers' Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers in New York, Columbia University Library MS Plimpton 259

In 1477 William Caxton published the first edition of Earl Rivers’s Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, one of the several translations of Guillaume de Tignonville’s Ditz Moraulx des Philosophes that were produced in England in the second half of the fifteenth century. Two more editions by Caxton followed shortly after (ca. 1480 and 1489) together with several manuscript copies, most of which, unfortunately, have not yet received scholarly attention. One of them is extant in New York, Columbia University Library, MS Plimpton 259. A remarkably abridged version of Caxton’s first edition, this version is included in a miscellany of secular and religious works produced for Robert Gottes, a Norfolk gentleman. The article proposes a study and an edition of the text, followed by a commentary.