CHAUCER, Geoffrey. ~ Troilus and Criseyde. Waltham Saint Lawrence, [1926-] 1927.
Small folio (310 × 180 mm), pp. xi, [1], 309, [5]. Woodcut ornaments by Eric Gill, including four full-page illustrations, printed in Caslon with black, red, and blue ink on Kelmscott hand-made paper. Original quarter goatskin by Sangorski and Sutcliffe, spine lettered in gilt, patterned paper boards, top edge gilt, others uncut. Spine very slightly faded and rubbed, corners very slightly bumped. Bookplate of W. and P. J. Kupfer.
Number 183 of 225 copies. Troilus and Criseyde is the first of the three outstanding Golden Golden Cockerel Press editions produced by Robert Gibbings and Eric Gill (the others being The Canterbury Tales and the The Four Gospels). The Middle English text was edited by Arundell del Re, the compositors were F. Young and A.H. Gibbsand the pressman, A.C Cooper.
Gill’s woodcuts include portraits of Chaucer: one depicting him with Cupid whispering in his ear, the other shows him writing Troilus. There are four full page illustrations, one at the beginning of each book, while every page has a tall border facing each other across each opening. In these Gill successfully re-imagined the borders of medieval manuscripts in which the images do more than simply decorate the margins, but work in interplay with the text — marking, illustrating and commenting with varying degrees of transparency, subtlety, eroticism and humour. ‘They rank very high in the range of Gill’s work’ (Franklin, p. 142).
Provenance: Sotheby’s, 10th July 2001, lot 369.
Franklin, The Private Presses, 137-144.