CHAUCER, Geoffrey
The Workes.
London, Adam Islip, 1602.£12,000.00
Folio. Ff [24] 376 [14]. Black letter, double column, Roman and some italic. Title within elaborate woodcut architectural border flanked by allegorical female figures, putti in the corners, grapes hanging from arch, a skull and bones with a snake in the central panel at bottom of page, light ink soiling to upper margin. Frontispiece with full page portrait of Chaucer and genealogical chart, in good impression, outer margin dusty and handsome woodcut of a mounted Knight to B1. Historiated initials and ornaments throughout. Very slightly age yellowed, a few marginal thumb marks, little ink stain to a few upper edges. Contemporary autograph of ‘Samuel Harvey’ and motto ‘spero meliora’ to t-p. Tear from lower margin of fol.47, not affecting text. A very good, clean, well-margined copy in contemporary calf, tooled and gilt, covers with central arms of Elizabeth I gilt, slightly worn, missing ties, rebacked, a.e.r.
A good copy of Speght’s second definitive edition of the complete works of Chaucer, with a handsome engraved full-length portrait of the poet and woodcut of a mounted knight at the start of the Canterbury Tales. This volume improves upon and adds to previous editions of Chaucer’s works, published since 1542. It is the earliest edition ‘in which thorough punctuation was attempted, and in many other ways it is a distinct improvement upon Speght’s first edition’. Included is an expanded biography, a newly edited version of the texts and two additional works, printed for the first time: ‘La Priere de nostre Dame’, an A.B.C. poem with alphabetically arranged verses, and the ‘Treatise called Jacke Upland against the Friers’, a polemic attacking mendicant orders, which was not by Chaucer. This volume is dedicated to Robert Cecil (1563-1612), the 1st Earl of Salisbury and chief minister of Queen Elizabeth I, but it retains the dedication to King Henry VIII present in earlier versions.
Lauded by his contemporary Hoccleve (1368-1426) as the ‘father of English literature’, Chaucer (c.1340-1400) is one of the most influential names in English literary history, ‘praised both for his eloquence and the way he ‘illumined’ the English language and for his ‘sentence’ (DNB). He transformed verse composition by writing in Middle English, the language of court, which had not often been employed in poetry, and using European decasyllabic meter, which developed into iambic pentameter, the meter of Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth.
The biography comprises a number of sections about Chaucer’s life, including his education, family and relationships, finances, work, and death. In addition to the genealogical plate, there is also a stemma with brief comments about the lives of his ancestors and descendants until the reign of Henry VII, followed by a more in-depth commentary. The account of his death contains the date, the location of his tomb at Westminster Abbey, as well as the original inscription on his epitaph. The volume closes with a useful glossary of Latin and French words untranslated in the verses, as well as difficult Middle English words, designed to support later readers of his poetry, and an alphabetical index of authors cited by Chaucer.
A most learned early edition designed for later students of the great English wordsmith.
ESTC: S107214, STC: 5081, Lowndes: 425, Grolier: 44; Pforzheimer: 178.In stock
