Oct 13, 2022 - Sale 2617

Sale 2617 - Lot 159

Price Realized: $ 9,100
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
Caxton, William (1422-1491)
E. Gordon Duff's William Caxton, [with] a Leaf from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 1476-1477.

Chicago: Caxton Club, 1905.



Small folio leaf hand-numbered in pencil 135/136 in a modern hand, being a leaf from the Reeve's Tale, taken from Lord Ashburnham's incomplete first edition of The Canterbury Tales (no complete copies are known), the leaf with thirty-nine lines per page, printed in Caxton's Type 2, beginning with line 4117: "For it was nyght & ferther mighte they nought," ending with line 4174: "Ye they shal have the flour of yll endyng"; the leaf 9 1/8 x 7 in., tucked into a pocket mounted onto the back board; bound in publisher's half red cloth; limited edition, one of 250 copies printed for the Caxton Club, 12 x 9 1/4 in.

The leaf from Hain-Copinger 4921; Duff, Early English Books 87; De Ricci's census of Caxtons 22; Gesamtkatalog 6585; Goff C-431; ISTC ic00431000.

From the Ken Rapoport Collection.