A VERY STRIKING CONTINUOUS BIFOLIUM, EACH LEAF WITH A LARGE WOOD ENGRAVING, FROM AN INCOMPLETE COPY OF CHAUCER'S "WORKS.

Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1896. FROM A COPY OF AN EDITION OF 425. 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. ◆IN 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..