This is a new critical edition of the most widely dispersed and popular Middle English alliterative poems apart from Piers Plowman. It contains a new critical text, based upon all the surviving manuscripts. There is full discussion of the textual relations, and the editorial methods best suited to presenting a text extant in many copies. There are full manuscript descriptions and the editors discuss sources and possible authorship.
The Siege of Jerusalem was previously edited for the society by Eugen Köbling and Mabel Day (O.S. 188, 1932). The current editors present new material not then available and incorporate major recent developments in textual scholarship.