THE BOOK OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER, AN ACCOUNT OF THE PUBLICATION OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER'S WORKS FROM THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO MODERN TIMES

Item Details

San Francisco, The Book Club of California, 1963, cloth

limited to 450 copies, Very Good

 

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First edition, limited to 450 copies (Leaf Book - Chalmers 128 & 140). Prospectus loosely inserted. This copy Two Chaucer Leaves [cover title], Berkeley, CA: Tamalpais Press, 1965. Two early printed leaves of sixteenth-century black-letter folios tipped into a printed bifolium, folio, 35.5 x 25.5 cm. The leaf from the undated edition (circa 1551) measures 30 x 19.5 cm and has four decorative initials (three 6-line and one 8-line) in Folio CCXXXV, on the subject of Boethius. The second leaf, from the 1561 edition, measures 31 x 21.5 cm and has three 8-line decorative initials. Biofolium printed in black and red with explanatory ext; the bifolium with minor soiling. 

Designed and printed by Lawton Kennedy. An account of the publication of Chaucer's works over a period of more than five hundred years, from his own day to modern times. The author describes the books themselves, the changing conventions of typography, the book trade, the relations between printers and publishers, the contributions of successive editors, and the problem of providing an accurate text. He also gives the first complete account of the woodcut illustrations in the early editions. Many illustrations, including an original leaf from the 1561 edition of Chaucer's WORKS. With additions by John Stow, printed by John Kingston for John Wight and Henry Bradshaw. 

Harlan writes: "This description and analysis of the several manuscript and printed editions of Chaucer's masterpiece has become something of a classic in its own right. A notice in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, in commending the matching of the skill of the printer and the erudition of the author, concluded by raising in general the standards of scholarship and book publication of the Club which it describes as equal to the best in the Americas. Included in the Exhibition of Western Books (Rounce & Coffin Club)." 

The keepsake that houses the two original Chaucer leaves is limited to 88 copies only, and was printed by Duncan H. Olmsted and Roger Levenson at Levenson's Tamalpais Press for presentation to members of the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco and other friends. The text on the bifolium, "adapted by Duncan H. Olmsted from Charles Muscatine's The Book of Geoffrey Chaucer," explains the sources of the leaves and their typographical and historical significance. 

Charles Muscatine was an American academic specializing in medieval literature, particularly Chaucer; his work transformed Chaucer studies by turning attention to the French models for Chaucer's poetry. 

 

San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1963; folio, cloth; (viii), 64 pages. Book # 34539

 

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