workes of Geffray Chaucer
newly printed with dyuers workes whiche were neuer in print before: As in the table more playnly dothe appere.
- London: Printed...by Thomas Godfray, 1532
London: Printed...by Thomas Godfray, 1532. RIVIÈRE & SON. . The workes of Geffray Chaucer. newly printed with dyuers workes whiche were neuer in print before: As in the table more playnly dothe appere. London: Printed...by Thomas Godfray, 1532.
Full Description:
CHAUCER, Geoffrey. The workes of Geffray Chaucer newly printed, with dyuers workes whiche were neuer in print before: As in the table more playnly dothe appere. [London: Printed...by Thomas Godfray, 1532.
The first collected edition of Chaucer's works, and the first attempt at historical editing of any English author. Folio in sixes (11 11/16 x 8 1/8 inches; 297 x 205 mm.). 397 leaves plus an additional leaf (Qq7) containing compartment for divisional title on recto ([22], xiii-CCxix, [4], CCxx-CCC, CCC-CCClxxxiii leaves). With fourteen leaves, including title, in facsimile (A1-A4, B1, I4, Qq4, Qq5, Qq7, and Vvv2-Vvv6). Black letter. Forty-eight lines plus headline, double columns. Several sets of decorated initials and lombards used as initials, a few capital spaces with guides. Fifteen woodcuts in the Canterbury Tales, three repeated, one three times, a total of twenty impressions. Edited by William Thynne.
Handsomely bound by Rivière & Son in full brown morocco. Covers decoratively panelled in blind, spine in six compartments with five raised bands, gilt-lettered in two compartments and decoratively tooled in blind in the remaining four, board edges and turn-ins ruled in blind, all edges gilt. A few early ink annotations. Housed in a custom full brown morocco clamshell. Box with some tape repairs at edges. Overall a very good copy.
The first collected edition of Chaucer deserves to rank in many ways with the 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare. The editor, William Thynne, was chief clerk of the kitchen in Henry VIII's household, and accrued a wide variety of lucrative preferments. His dedication to Henry VIII, actually written by Sir Brian Tuke, contains many interesting remarks on the development of language and on Thynne's efforts at forming an "author collection" of Chaucer, both manuscript and printed. The source for the Canterbury Tales was Wynkyn de Worde's 1498 edition, collated with several manuscripts. Besides authentic works, Thynne included some two dozen inauthentic poems, making this the largest compendium of Middle English poetry heretofore published. In all, twenty-one of the poems in the collection are first printings, including four authentically by Chaucer: "The Book of the Duchess," "The Complaint unto Pity," "Lack of Steadfastness, and "The Legend of Good Women." Thynne has often by criticized for publishing so many inauthentic poems in his Chaucer, but this is unhistorical; nor is it even clear that he was making an active claim of authenticity for all that was included. His edition established the vulgate text of Chaucer for well over two centuries, until Tyrwhitt's great edition of the Canterbury Tales appeared in 1775 (see Sotheby's New York, 29 October 1996, lot 346).
"The woodcuts of the Knight and the Squire are here used for the first time as Chaucer illustrations (the former is a close copy of the cut used in the Pynson 1526 edition) but the rest belong to the original series of blocks cut for Caxton's second edition of the Canterbury Tales (1484)" (Pforzheimer).
Pforzheimer 173. STC 5068.
HBS 69608.
$125,000.
Full Description:
CHAUCER, Geoffrey. The workes of Geffray Chaucer newly printed, with dyuers workes whiche were neuer in print before: As in the table more playnly dothe appere. [London: Printed...by Thomas Godfray, 1532.
The first collected edition of Chaucer's works, and the first attempt at historical editing of any English author. Folio in sixes (11 11/16 x 8 1/8 inches; 297 x 205 mm.). 397 leaves plus an additional leaf (Qq7) containing compartment for divisional title on recto ([22], xiii-CCxix, [4], CCxx-CCC, CCC-CCClxxxiii leaves). With fourteen leaves, including title, in facsimile (A1-A4, B1, I4, Qq4, Qq5, Qq7, and Vvv2-Vvv6). Black letter. Forty-eight lines plus headline, double columns. Several sets of decorated initials and lombards used as initials, a few capital spaces with guides. Fifteen woodcuts in the Canterbury Tales, three repeated, one three times, a total of twenty impressions. Edited by William Thynne.
Handsomely bound by Rivière & Son in full brown morocco. Covers decoratively panelled in blind, spine in six compartments with five raised bands, gilt-lettered in two compartments and decoratively tooled in blind in the remaining four, board edges and turn-ins ruled in blind, all edges gilt. A few early ink annotations. Housed in a custom full brown morocco clamshell. Box with some tape repairs at edges. Overall a very good copy.
The first collected edition of Chaucer deserves to rank in many ways with the 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare. The editor, William Thynne, was chief clerk of the kitchen in Henry VIII's household, and accrued a wide variety of lucrative preferments. His dedication to Henry VIII, actually written by Sir Brian Tuke, contains many interesting remarks on the development of language and on Thynne's efforts at forming an "author collection" of Chaucer, both manuscript and printed. The source for the Canterbury Tales was Wynkyn de Worde's 1498 edition, collated with several manuscripts. Besides authentic works, Thynne included some two dozen inauthentic poems, making this the largest compendium of Middle English poetry heretofore published. In all, twenty-one of the poems in the collection are first printings, including four authentically by Chaucer: "The Book of the Duchess," "The Complaint unto Pity," "Lack of Steadfastness, and "The Legend of Good Women." Thynne has often by criticized for publishing so many inauthentic poems in his Chaucer, but this is unhistorical; nor is it even clear that he was making an active claim of authenticity for all that was included. His edition established the vulgate text of Chaucer for well over two centuries, until Tyrwhitt's great edition of the Canterbury Tales appeared in 1775 (see Sotheby's New York, 29 October 1996, lot 346).
"The woodcuts of the Knight and the Squire are here used for the first time as Chaucer illustrations (the former is a close copy of the cut used in the Pynson 1526 edition) but the rest belong to the original series of blocks cut for Caxton's second edition of the Canterbury Tales (1484)" (Pforzheimer).
Pforzheimer 173. STC 5068.
HBS 69608.
$125,000.
Details
Title
workes of Geffray Chaucer
Author
CHAUCER, Geoffrey
Condition
Unknown
Publisher
Printed...by Thomas Godfray: London
Date
1532