The Basilisk Press facsimile of the Kelmscottt Chaucer.×

CHAUCER Geoffrey; BASILISK PRESS  (1974.)

£2500.00 

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THE PRINTER'S OWN COPY

Basilisk Press facsimile edition. One of 515 copies, this unnumbered. 1 Volume, folio, 30 x 42.5cm, 554pp. 87 Woodcut illustrations after designs by Edward Burne-Jones and recut for this edition, printed in black and red in Chaucer and Troy types. Original quarter brown calf over tan cloth boards, spine lettered and ruled in blind with 6 compartments. Basilisk Press, London.

Very good, spine soiled but boards clean and internally fine. Loose bifolia inserted with pages 545 and 546 printed, the other two pages blank. 

This copy was presented by Charlene Garry, the founder of the Basilisk Press, to the printer of the edition, Bernard Roberts of the John Roberts Press. Roberts held something of an aversion to the Morris patterned cloth used to bind the regular edition and desired something decidedly more modest; instead, he requested his copy bound in plain brown quarter calf with tan cloth boards, an austere style which owed more to the Kelmscott bindings of cloth and paper than the luxurious pigskin copies of the Chaucer. It was this same copy which the Folio Society used to create their facsimile in 2002. 

Stock Code: 240797

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