The Book of Geoffrey Chaucer: An Account of the Publication of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Works From the Fifteenth Century to Modern Times.

MUSCATINE, Charles; [Geoffrey Chaucer].

$200.00

Item Number: 146547

San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1963.

Limited first edition of this history of Chaucer’s works with examples of his poetry and illustrations from his publications. Folio, original red cloth with gilt titles to the spine and knight design to the front panel, frontispiece of a page from the Ellesmere manuscript showing the squire, illustrated with facsimile woodcuts, engraved headpieces and initials, pictorial title pages, and an original leaf from the 1561 edition of Chaucer’s ‘Works’ tipped in to page 24. One of only four hundred and fifty examples. In fine condition, ownership tag tipped in to the front pastedown.

Widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer remains best known for his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales, a collection of twenty-four stories written between 1387 and 1400. Perhaps the greatest contribution of The Canterbury Tales to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, the Pearl Poet, and Julian of Norwich—also wrote major literary works in English.