The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer

London: Bernard Lintot, 1721. First edition. Contemporary speckled calf. Very Good. LANDMARK EARLY MODERN EDITION OF CHAUCER'S WORKS. The Canterbury Tales, the most culturally productive of Chaucer's works, has existed in a state of flux since its earliest manuscript traces. No manuscript surviving from the Middle Ages contains all of the known tales, and, in exemplars which do witness the same episodes, the sequence often varies-in addition to containing more commonplace textual variations in language and presentation. Thus, the task of compiling Chaucer's works for print publication, with an increased need for standardisation and an expectation of mass circulation, gives rise to manifold editorial considerations and yields no unprecarious route towards the modern ambition for a definitive volume. These complexities result in a rich and storied editorial history of Chaucer's works, from the fourteenth century to the present day.

John Urry was one of those who undertook the herculean task of editing Chaucer. By the eighteenth century, once a medieval text had been set in print, the need to return to manuscript sources was often felt with less imperative. Such was the case with Chaucer, and in post-Reformation Britain an "obvious interest in Chaucer coupled with wide misinformation about his life" contributed to need for substantive critical intervention (Shugrue, p. 229). Indeed, Urry's 1721 edition presented here is primarily noteworthy for being the first new edition of Chaucer's works in over a century to examine Chaucer from the early source texts. "His is the first edition of Chaucer for nearly a hundred and fifty years to consult any manuscripts and is the first since that of William Thynne in 1534 to seek systematically to assemble a substantial number of manuscripts to establish his text,"writes British historian E.I. Carlyle, noting Urry's is "also the first edition to offer descriptions of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works" (DNB). Published in 1721-having been completed posthumously by fellow members of Christ Church, Oxford, Thomas Ainsworth and Timothy and William Thomas, following Urry's death in 1715-it is also the first edition of Chaucer to printed in Latin type.

While the return to manuscript sources demonstrates an admirable dedication to the task of the editor, Urry's endeavour resulted in a unique compilation of Chaucer's works, in particular, while also including canonical works such as the The Parliament of Fowls and The Romance of the Rose. One of Urry's sources was the late fifteenth-century Northumberland MS 455, the only extant manuscript that contains "The Tale of Beryn". Across the fifteenth century, Chaucerians around Great Britain furnished texts which emulated the works which today are firmly ascribed to Chaucer, namely The Canterbury Tales whose episodic structure lends itself to modes of extra-authorial continuation and expansion. So though "The Tale of Beryn" as well as another romance included by Urry, "The Tale of Gamelyn", are today placed outside of the accepted canon, they are important literary works that inform our understanding of Chaucer's immediate reception context, and which continue to receive scholarly attention and editorial treatment. Urry's inclusion of "The Merchant's Second Tale, or the History of Beryn" and "The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn" thus constitutes the tales' editiones principes, and is a benchmark in the history of how Chaucer has been received by modern audiences.

Standing at over fifteen inches, with richly detailed illustrations of each pilgrim of The Canterbury Tales on horseback and portraits of Chaucer and Urry, the present copy would have been a deluxe publication upon its initial release in the first half of the eighteenth century-and still is regarded as one the most exquisite editions of Chaucer.

CHAUCER, GEOFFREY; URRY, JOHN (ED.) The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. London: Bernard Lintot, 1721. First edition. Tall folio (245 x 396 mm), [lii], 626, 81, [1] pages; engraved plates and decorations, include full-page portraits Urry and Chaucer. 20th-century full speckled calf in period style, raised bands, red leather spine label. Occasional spots of foxing or toning but generally very clean. A very handsome and exceptionally tall copy.

References:

DNB "Urry, John (1666-1715)", by E. I. Carlyle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)

Shugrue, Michael, "The Urry Chaucer (1721) and the London Uprising of 1384: A Phase in Chaucerian Biography", Journal of English and German Philology 65.2 (1966), 229-37.