Chaucer, The works, London, 1561, later English calf, Onslow-Wardington copy

Geoffrey Chaucer

The works... newlie printed, with divers addicions, which were never in print before... [edited by John Stow]. [London: John Kingston for John Wight], 1561

folio (320 x 215mm.), Black Letter, title within woodcut border, section titles for the Canterbury Tales and The Romaunt of the Rose within a full-page woodcut border, woodcut initials and illustrations, seventeenth-century English calf, lacking final 23 leaves (containing Lydgate's Siege of Thebes), title-page defective and laid down, A2 torn without loss, a few small stains or tears, rebacked

The woodcuts are based on those used by Caxton for his famous edition of 1483; some of the blocks here were previously used by Richard Pynson. Caxton's edition had the woodcut for each character in both the prologue and at the start of each tale, but this was reduced in subsequent editions to the prologues only, with the exception of the first tale in the book, the Knight's Tale. Kingston also issued this work without any woodcuts in the prologue, plausibly because he only obtained the blocks part way through the printing (see D.R. Carlson, "Woodcut illustrations of the Canterbury Tales, 1483-1602, The Library 19 (1997), 25-67, p.50).

For the 1598 edition, see lot 141, and for a leaf from the Kelmscott Chaucer, see lot 143.

LITERATURE:

ESTC S107206; STC 5075

PROVENANCE:

Arthur Onslow, armorial bookplate (presumably the Arthur Onslow who was Speaker in the House of Commons, 1708-1710); Lord Wardington, bookplate at end; by descent to the present owner