Geoffrey Chaucer.

Published by No publisher or place or date stated, but 1974 or later, 1974

About this Item

Illustrated printed wrappers,stapled, 30 cm, unpaginated, [35] pp. 328 items. From the introduction: "This catalogue describes a collection of 328 items of Chaucerian interest, both original printed editions of Chaucer's works and more recent critical works.; The catalogue is divided into three parts. The first part lists single works and collected editions of Chaucer in order of their date of publication, ranging from a single leaf from the prototypographer of England William Caxton's first printing of the Canterbury Tales (1) printed c.1478, to the limited edition 1974 facsimile of the celebrated Kelmscott Chaucer (33). Between these extremes are found many of the most important early critical editions of Chaucer, including the first efforts of John Stowe (3) and of Thomas Speght (4), and the less successful attempt of John Urry (8). Moving on from the great black-letter folios, the Chaucerian scholar comes across a 'first' of the fine Thomas Tyrwhitt edition (10), in which the editor's scholarly instincts produced a comparatively good text from second-rate manuscripts and accompanied it with valuable illustrative notes. .Also included in this first section are examples of the many attempts to reproduce the nuances of Chaucer's 'Middle English' in contemporary idiom, the earlies tthere being Alexander Stopford Catcott's scarce rendering of The Court of Love into heroic couplets of 1717 (7). .The second part of the catalogue lists critical works issued in book form, from such early works as Sir Francis Kynaston's notable explication of Troilus and Criseyde, here in a nineteenth-century transcript (131) and William Godwin's Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, represented in this collection both in its first edition of 1803 (94) and its first octavo edition of the following year (95). The majority of the critical works in this section are however twentieth-century, combining with the third part of the catalogue, which lists critical works issued as offprints from academic journals, to form a large library of the best in contemporary Chaucerian scholarship." Good. Seller Inventory # ABE-48412

Bibliographic Details

Title: Geoffrey Chaucer.

Publisher: No publisher or place or date stated, but 1974 or later

Publication Date: 1974

Binding: Soft cover

Edition: 1st Edition