In preparing this edition, my deepest debt is to the many former editors of Pearl, and especially to Israel Gollancz and E. V. Gordon, whose lexical and etymological wisdom has provided a grounding for all subsequent readings of the poem. Anyone newly editing Pearl sits gratefully and nervously on the shoulders of giants.

For more immediate debts, I would like to acknowledge the generous support of institutions that have made important resources available to me. I thank in particular the British Library for graciously giving me permission to examine MS Cotton Nero A.x., art. 3, and to use it as my copy text. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Clare Hall for a Visiting Fellowship in the spring of 2000 and also to the Cambridge University Library, where much of the work on this edition was conducted. Thanks are due as well to the Committee on Research and Publication at the College of the Holy Cross for travel support, and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for its continuing support of the series.

Thanks are due as well to students and colleagues who helped me out with this project in numerous ways — to Lisa Melodia and Allison Lurker, who read the text and provided frank advice on glossing; and to colleagues who read parts of the manuscript or offered astute advice: Ross Arthur, John Bowers, Charley Blyth, Jill Mann, Linne Mooney, Lynn Staley, Peter Travis, Kathryn Walls, and especially Russell Peck and the editorial staff of the Middle English Texts Series, particularly Dana Symons, Mara Amster, and Alan Lupack.