“FOREMOST AMONG WRITERS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE”: IMPORTANT FIRST SPEGHT EDITION OF CHAUCER, 1598

CHAUCER. The Workes of our Antient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, newly Printed. London: Adam Islip at the charges of Thomas Wight, 1598. Folio, contemporary full blind-stamped brown calf sympathetically rebacked and recornered with original spine laid down, raised bands. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of Chaucer to be edited by Thomas Speght, the sixth overall and last of the 16th century, and the most recent Chaucer edition available when Shakespeare was adapting Chaucer’s Troilus to his own Troilus and Cressida (1601-2). Featuring the first inclusion of two works, “Chaucer’s Dream” and “The Flower and the Leaf,” now considered apocryphal, along with the engraved title page and the often-missing “first engraved portrait of Chaucer” (Grolier, Langland to Wither 43). An exceptional, complete copy in contemporary calf.

The immortal opening lines of his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales have few equals in all of literature. This edition of Chaucer’s Workes, published at the height of the Elizabethan era, was an important influence on many of the day’s great writers. “It is difficult to pass over the name of Chaucer without marking the high pitch of perfection to which he brought the art of narration in verse… He was a great narrative artist, incomparably the greatest of an age that loved story-telling” (Sir Walter Raleigh). “The most remarkable feature of this edition is the glossary which was largely the editor’s production and was the main object of Francis Thynne’s Animadversions” (Pforzheimer). With double-column gothic type text, scarce copper-engraved frontispiece portrait of Chaucer after Hoccleve: “the first engraved portrait of Chaucer” (Grolier, Langland to Wither 43). The tales preceded by the full-page woodcut of Chaucer’s arms, and woodcut-engraving of “The Knight.” With elaborate woodcut title border, intricate woodcut border repeated on divisional title-pages to The Canterbury Tales (showing the houses of York and Lancaster), The Romaunt of the Rose and The Story of Thebes. Second issue of this edition, according to STC. Complete, with numerous errors in pagination, as issued. First four leaves of Romant of the Rose (116-119) bound in inverted sequence without loss of text. With errata leaf, initial and final blanks: half of initial blank excised. STC 5079. Rosenbach 45:166. See Grolier Langland to Wither 43 (Norton imprint); Hammond 122-125 (Norton imprint); Pforzheimer 177 (Bishop imprint). Early owner signature and inscription of George Mason of Oxford. Owner signatures to general title page, terminal blank leaf, rear free endpaper.

Interior fresh with a bit of faint occasional marginal dampstaining, title page, dedication leaf and a few text leaves with small marginal tears. An exceptional copy in nearly fine condition in contemporary calf.