I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Canterbury Tales, The
London: The Folio Society, 2010. Item #06638
One of the Great Books of the Twentieth Century”
No. 8 of 1,980 Copies — A Superb Folio Society Facsimile
CHAUCER, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. With wood engravings by Eric Gill. London: The Folio Society, 2010.
“This Facsimile Edition.” Limited to 1,980 numbered copies, this example no. 8.
Folio (12 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches; 308 x 191 mm.). [1-7], 8-764, [2], [1, limitation statement], [1, blank] pp. Illustrated throughout with Gill’s celebrated wood engravings, originally printed at the Golden Cockerel Press under the direction of Robert Gibbings. Printed in Germany by Memminger MedienCentrum on Corolla Classic Watermark laid paper.
Elegantly bound by G. Lachenmaier in full black goatskin boards, front cover decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt to a design by Neil Gower, smooth spine gilt-lettered, blue endpapers, all edges gilt, silk marker.
[With:]
The Golden Cockerel Press The Canterbury Tales. Decoration and the Mise en Page. Essay by Peter Holliday. London: The Folio Society, 2010.
Folio (12 1/4 x 8 inches; 311 x 204 mm.). [1-6], 7-48 pp. Frontispiece and ten illustrations in the text. Quarter black cloth over blue boards, front cover with printed paper label.
Together housed in the original black cloth clamshell case, spine lettered in gilt. With the original “Two Sample Pages” in black paper folder and the publisher’s four-page prospectus. A mint, as new set.
A magnificent facsimile of the Golden Cockerel Press Canterbury Tales (1929–31), widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century private press printing. This Folio Society production faithfully recreates the scale, typography, and mise-en-page of the original, preserving the remarkable integration of text and image conceived by Gibbings and Gill.
Gill’s wood engravings - bold, architectural, and deeply expressive - rank among his most important book illustrations, bringing a modern vitality to Geoffrey Chaucer’s great pilgrimage narrative. The present edition, printed on fine laid paper and bound in full goatskin, succeeds not merely as a reproduction but as a worthy modern counterpart to the Golden Cockerel original.
The accompanying essay volume by Holliday offers a detailed examination of the book’s decoration and design, further enhancing the set’s bibliographical interest, while the inclusion of the rarely preserved prospectus and sample leaves adds an additional layer of completeness and appeal.
Examples of the original Golden Cockerel Press Canterbury Tales are now firmly in the realm of major private press collecting. This facsimile - particularly in such pristine condition and with its ancillary material intact - offers a compelling alternative: a museum-quality presentation of one of the defining illustrated books of the twentieth century, at a fraction of the cost.
Price: $850.00