Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$50.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: Fine (as new). Digital facsimile (in electronic PDF format on 2 CD-ROM discs; not a printed book) of a magnificent copy of the finest printed work of William Morris's Kelmscott Press, the Kelmscott Chaucer, which features illustrations by the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. This Octavo Edition--photographed from Burne-Jones's own copy, one of the first two produced, with a special pigskin binding designed by Morris and executed by Douglas Cockerell, from the collection of Bridwell Library--contains detailed digital images (may be magnified at up to 300% of original size) of every page of the original edition (photographed as if the actual book were open before the viewer) as well as a new introduction by Nicolas Barker, detailed bibliographical information, and reproductions of unique items preserved with this copy. Clean copy, not a remainder.
Seller: Philip Smith, Bookseller, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$449.14 + shipping
Description: Folio, (423x289mm). [2]p. Letterpress printed in black in the Chaucer type on handmade laid paper with the shoulder-title printed in red. Slightly creased. Pages 507-8 of Liber III from what is generally regarded as the ultimate achievement of William Morris' Kelmscott Press. Printed with the Chaucer type, which was a recut smaller version of the black-letter influenced Troy type, in a deep-black ink that was specially made for Morris in Germany. An uncommon opportunity to obtain an example of what ranks as one of the most estimable books of any era of printing history. Please note that the advised postage is based on an average book, if possible the postage will be reduced to the correct amount and you will be notified by email.
Seller: Barry McKay Rare Books, Appleby-in-Westmorland, CUMBR, United Kingdom
Price: US$481.22 + shipping
Description: A single leaf (pp523-524) from the larger work. Slightest of creasing to edges, else fine. A leaf from the Kelmscott Press' 'The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer now newly imprinted', taken from Book IV of his epic poem Troilus and Criseyde. Founded in 1891 in Hammersmith by famed designer William Morris (1834-1896), Kelmscott looked to the earliest days of printing to recreate the styles and techniques of the original 15th century typesetting. The result set a new standard for book design, featuring 87 illustrations and decorative borders. This leaf from book IV describes the poem's hero, Troilus, distraught in grief after learning his lover Criseyde has been exchanged for information with the Greeks, praying for death to 'cometh and endeth peyne'. Size: Dimensions 288 x 423 millimetres
Seller: Antiquates Ltd - ABA, ILAB, Wareham, Dorset, United Kingdom
Price: US$5720.00 + shipping
Description: 425 x 289 mm. (16 3/4 x 11 3/8"). pp. 439-42. Untrimmed, unsewn leaves that were never permanently bound, attractively matted. WITH WOODCUT INITIAL AND BORDERS DESIGNED BY WILLIAM MORRIS, THE WOOD-ENGRAVED ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDWARD BURNE-JONES. âIN VERY FINE CONDITION, with only trivial imperfections. This beautiful publisher's work of art comes from the Kelmscott Chaucer, one of the great achievements in the history of printing. It comes from an incomplete copy that was apparently put to (gentle) use in the Press workshop, and that was purchased at auction having been laid into the publisher's boards but never having been bound (there are stab holes on some leaves, as here, but nothing was ever glued). William Morris had fallen in love with Chaucer's works when he and Burne-Jones were students at Oxford, and with the founding of the Kelmscott Press in 1891, Morris began plans, first announced to the public in 1892, for the Chaucer. Praise for this work--compared as a printing masterpiece to the Gutenberg Bible and Caxton's first printing of Chaucer in 1478--has never stopped coming. "Artist & the Book" says that it is "perhaps the most famous book of the modern private press movement, and the culmination of William Morris' endeavor." Ray says that the book "is not only the most important of the Kelmscott Press' productions; it is also one of the great books of the world." Yeats called the Kelmscott Chaucer "the most beautiful of all printed books." Copies in the regular publisher's boards now sell for upwards of $100,000 (and for much more in special bindings). Being a book commanding treatment as a precious object, the Kelmscott Chaucer is almost never found incomplete, and because taking apart a complete copy would constitute wanton destruction of a major cultural artifact, leaves like this--especially a bifolium (not to mention a continuous bifolium)--are quite uncommon in the marketplace.
Seller: Phillip J. Pirages Rare Books (ABAA), McMinnville, OR, U.S.A.
Price: US$148500.00 + shipping
Description: One of 425 copies of a total edition of 438. With 87 wood-engravings designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, cut by W.H. Hooper after drawings by Robert Catterson-Smith, superb wood-engraved title page, fourteen very fine large borders, eighteen different woodcut frames around the illustrations, twenty-six nineteen line woodcut initial letters, and numerous initials, decorative woodcut printers device all designed by William Morris and cut by C.E. Keates, Hooper and W. Spelmeyer, with shoulder and side titles. Printed in red and black in Chaucer type, double column, headings to the longer poems in Troy type. Folio (425 x 289 mm), printer's original Holand linen-backed blue paper boards, original paper label on the spine lettered in black. iv, 554 pp. An especially fine and handsome copy, the text is pristine, crisp, fresh and bright, the binding in full original state and in excellent condition, the linen on these bindings is typically heavily mellowed but this copy is virtually free of that mellowing, the original blue paper covered boards with just a little rubbing or wear at the corners only, a splendid copy indeed. A VERY FINE AND HANDSOME COPY OF WHAT IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PRINTED BOOK IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The Kelmscott Chaucer is "the most famous book of the modern private press movement, and the culmination of William Morris's endeavor" (The Artist and the Book). "[F]rom first appearance, the Chaucer gained a name as the finest book since Gutenberg. It has held its place near the head of the polls ever since. The terms which critics used in the eighteen-nineties to welcome it simply show us what an impression Morris's printing made upon late Victorian bookmen" (Colin Franklin, The Private Presses, p. 43). Evidence of the esteem in which the book has been held lies in the fact that after the Second World War, during the rebuilding of Japan and its libraries, a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer was the first book presented to the Japanese people by the British Government on behalf of the English nation. The Kelmscott Press produced forty-eight books in its brief life. Morris had toyed with the idea of a Shakespeare in three folio volumes; a suggestion for a King James version of the Bible was in his pending file; and preliminary work had begun on editions of Froissart and Malory, both of which would have formed a triumvirate with the Chaucer. But on October 3, 1896, Morris died, and for all intents and purposes the Kelmscott Press died with him, the Froissart and Malory unfinished. The Chaucer, regretfully, remained the only "titan" among Kelmscott books. Morris dedicated his life to poetry and the decorative arts, but he did not exhibit an active interest in the design and production of books until he was fifty-five years old. He died eight years later, but in that brief fragment of time he established a standard and prestige that still make him one of the most powerful and pervasive influences in book design in the English-speaking, English-reading world.
Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.