[The Workes Of Geffrey Chau- cer, newly printed with divers ad- dicions, whiche were never in printe before; With the siege and Destruccion of the worthy citee of Thebes, compiled By Jhon Lidgate, Monke of Berie by CHAUCER (Geffrey)

As in the table more plainly Dooeth appere. (Large woodcut coat of arms bearing above the escutcheon the date:) 1560. (On panel below the escutcheon:) Vertue florisheth in Chaucer still, Though Death of hym, hath wrought his will.] [On colophon: Imprinted at Lon- Don, by Jhon Kyngston for Jhon Wight, dwelling in Poules Churchyarde. Anno.1561]. F’cap.folio, gathered variously, printed in black-letter throughout, in double column, fifty-five lines to the page (plus running titles); wood-engraved armorial title-page as above, and emblematic fly-titles to The Canterbury Tales and The Romaunt of the Rose (without date, publisher, or printer, the extensive wood-cut frame re-used from ‘The Union of the Houses of Lancaster and York’ by John Halle, published in 1550); wood-cut head-piece to ‘The Knightes Tale’ (the illustration flanked by two wood-cut pillars re-used from the quarto edition of the 1537 Coverdale Bible); colophon on final page of text followed by large wood-cut tail ornament; [floret]<SUP>4</SUP>, A - I<SUP>6</SUP>, K<SUP>4</SUP>, L - U, Aa - Il, Kk - Pp, Q (bis) - T (bis)<SUP>6</SUP>, U (bis), X<SUP>8</SUP>, Y, Z, Aaa - Iii, Kkk - Ttt<SUP>6</SUP>, Uuu<SUP>8</SUP>;ff.[10 unfoliated]+[i]-ccxxxij+ ccxxxij [sic!]+ ccxxxij [sic!!]+ ccxxxiij - ccxxxv+ [seven leaves variously mis-foliated, ending ccxlj (for ccxlij)]+ CCxlj [sic] - cccxxxvij+ cccxl - cccxliiij+ [one leaf foliated cccxxxix!]+ cccxlviij - ccclxxviij (despite the oddities of the pagination the catchwords and signatures are continuous throughout); old (probably late seventeenth or early eighteenth century) full panelled calf, ruled gilt and blind, tooled blind with guinea-roll rules and small oyster-shell corner ornaments in central panel, on sides, spine with five raised bands, ruled and tooled with an irregular guinea-roll diced pattern in compartments, red lettering-piece; matching marbled edges and end-papers. Re-backed and the front board re-cornered, probably in the early nineteenth century, the re-back now cracking slightly over front joint and worn a little at extreme head of spine; lacking the four leaves of prelims. (containing the general title, the dedication to Henry VIII., the Table which follows on from it, and two short prefatory poems apparently inserted here to fill up space), and the final leaf of text, these all being supplied in facsimile; the two secondary title-pages are here supplied from a copy of the 1598 edition (identical to those in the 1561 edition except that the wood-cut frame is here without the top and side rules, the printer’s flower is omitted from the central panel, and the titles are in Roman face rather than black-letter), these pasted onto stubs; small, old, repair to lower margins of A4, Lll6 and fore-margin of Rrr6; light marginal damp-stains and light dusting to gathering A, mainly affecting the fore- margins and corners of A2 - 4, the fore-margins being also very slightly frayed at the extreme edges, as likewise Uvv7 this last having three small holes just touching two letters of the text; extreme fore- and lower- margins of some leaves towards the end slightly damp-stained: so lightly as scarcely to be noticeable on most of them, but more heavily on lower margins of gathering Qqq onwards, affecting the bottom centimetre, or less, of half the margin; single wormhole through extreme inner margins of gathering Dd; another in extreme lower margin of Ff2, 5, and 6, and Gg1; small hole in lower margins of Lll4, Qqq3, Qqq5, and lower fore-corner of Sss5, due apparently to original paper flaws; insignificant pen trials or reader’s marks on lower margin of Cc2v and fore-margin of R5v, Nn1r, Ggg4v, and inner margin of Mm6v; pen trial on upper margin of Ji2r and small drawing of a flagon between the columns; contemporary ms. notes on Q5v and Qqq5v - the former a bold long vertical inscription, apparently recording ownership, but almost trimmed off by the eighteenth century binder; name ‘John Wyte’ (or ‘Wyke’) written in a very small neat contemporary hand on A2r and B1r (where the Christian name appears, in contracted form, as ‘Joh[ann]es’); otherwise, and in general, an excellent, clean, crisp copy with good margins. Loosely laid in for purposes of comparison are facsimiles of the two original secondary title pages. The first collected edition of Chaucer’s works was printed in three parts in 1526 by Pynson, and was very incomplete; it was superseded by a much fuller edition, edited by William Thynne, which first published in 1532, was reprinted in undated editions in 1540 or 1542 (the former date being claimed in an early ms. addition in the British Library copy, the latter being given by CBEL, I, p.211), and again either in 1545, 1546, 1550 or 1551 (depending which authority you follow), the last of these editions being distinguished in point of text principally by the fact of ‘The Ploughman’s Tale’ (a non-Chaucerian piece of Lollardy) being placed within the actual text of ‘The Canterbury Tales’ immediately preceeding ‘The Parson’s Tale’. The present edition represents a further re-printing of that, with the addition of a section of poems edited by John Stowe - this being his first published work - yet further enlarging the canon to the extent of some nineteen poems here first printed from manuscript sources. Sale of this present edition appears to have been slow and it was re-issued with a different title-page, bearing the date 1561, using at head and side borders a wood-cut of King Henry VIII and his court. The first three gatherings in fact were entirely reprinted, this being done to permit the inclusion of twenty-two wood-cut illustrations in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the signatures running [floret]<SUP>4</SUP> ([floret]iii being mis-signed Aiii), +<SUP>6</SUP>, A<SUP>4</SUP>, B - I<SUP>6</SUP>... instead of the [floret]<SUP>4</SUP>, A - I<SUP>6</SUP>... of the present issue. In the illustrated issue some damage to the wood-cut frame of the first secondary title is apparent which is not evident in the present issue: a crack in the wood extends from the centre of the lower edge, up through the box identifying King Henry IIII. to just left of centre of the title box, and another from the top left-hand corner of the title-box, through the box identifying King Henry VII and ending, apparently at a worm-hole, in its top rules. STC, 2nd edition, unaccountably and without assigning a reason, lists these two issues in the reverse order - despite the evidence in the illustrated issue of the later date on the title-page, the obviously interpolated gathering ‘+’ (which contains the first six illustrated leaves of ten, the rest being in the variant, short, gathering ‘A’), and the extended splitting of the wood-block on the title-page to the Canterbury Tales which shows only a slight split at the extreme tail in the present printing, and no worm-hole. There is no record of a further printing of Chaucer’s Works until 1598. The reason for both secondary titles having been replaced in the present copy is unclear: the originals have both here been carefully cut out (leaving an inch of stub for pasting on the cancel), and though it might be easy to account for the loss of the first secondary title (together with the other preliminary leaves and the final leaf of text) as the result of ill-usage of the volume, it is difficult to account for the similar loss of the second secondary title which formed part of an otherwise perfect gathering in the middle of the book. The inclusion in the present copy of a folio numbered ccxxxii no fewer than three times is correct: there is no reduplication of text, and the same thing occurs in the British Library copies of the 1560 - 61 edition; so also does the curious dropping of the lower case letters between Pp and Aaa. In addition to the systematic mis-foliations noticed above, leaf T2 (f.Ciiij) is misnumbered Ciij; Gg1 (f.Cli), Cxli; Gg6 (f.Clvi), Cxlvi; Nn6 (f.Cxcij), Ccxij; T[t]2 (f.CCxxiv), CCxxv; X[x]2 (f.ccxxxvi), ccxlij; X[x]3 (f.ccxxxvij), ccxliij; X[x]4 (f.ccxxxviij), ccxlvi; X[x]5 (f.ccxxxix), ccxliii; X[x]6 (f.ccxl), ccxliiij; X[x]7 (f.ccxli), ccxlvi; X[x]8 (f.ccxlij), ccxli; Y[y]1 (f.ccxliij), ccxli; Ddd3 (f.cclxxiij), cclxxvi; Fff1 (f.cclxxxiij), cclxxxi; Fff2 (f.cclxxxiiij), cclxxxiii; Kkk3 (f.cccix), cccviij; Kkk4 (f.cccx), cccix; Lll3 (f.cccxv), cccxvj; Lll4 (f.cccxvi), cccxvij; Ppp2 (f.cccxxxviij), ccclx; Qqq1 (f.cccxlv), cccxxxix; Qqq2 (f.cccxlvj), cccxlviij; Sss4 (f.ccclxij), ccclxiij; Uvv7 (f.ccclxxvij), ccclxvij. There is no catch-word present on Fff1v. The number 100 is variously represented by a capital or lower-case ‘c’, apparently distinguishing changes of compositor. STC 5076 All books listed by Robert Temple are first editions unless otherwise stated.