CHAUCER, Geoffrey.
£195,000 · Offered by Sokol Books
A large copy of the second collected edition of Chaucer’s works, with handsome woodcuts of the ‘The Canterbury Tales’ produced using the original blocks of Caxton’s second edition (1483), and the first appearance in print of ‘The Plowman’s Tale’. Rare on the market and the earliest edn. still found complete, though the present copy apart, not since 1943. ‘With the possible exception of Langland, except Dante, there is no poet of the middle ages of superior faculty and distinction’ (DNB). Celebrated as the ‘father of English Literature’ by the likes of Hoccleve and Dryden, he was the most influential writer to use the kind of English language, i.e., middle English, spoken at court, but not yet regularly employed in literature. This makes him the oldest English author still readable today. Chaucer (1340-1400) was employed as a courtier and civil servant, whilst also writing, foundational Middle English verse and a prose treatise on the astrolabe, under the patronage of the Duke of Lancaster. He was the first author to be buried in Poets’ Corner, at Westminster Abbey, as well as the first English poet to experiment with rhyme royal, and to use a decasyllabic verse much resembling the iambic pentameter which would later become the norm. The reception of his works changed the course of English Literature, even though, by the late Tudor period, his literary English had started to sound archaic, with regular ‘updates’ of his spelling. ‘Few authors took such productive advantage of C
- Binding: Hardcover
Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.