?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1343-1400) The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed.
London: Prynted by [Richard Grafton for] John Reynes, 1542.
Second edition, folio, one of two variants printed in the same year with different printers named in the imprint; the first edition edited by William Thynne, and the first collected edition to contain The Plowman's Tale; title within woodcut border with Rastell's initials, the same border repeated on the divisional titles; illustrated with twenty-one woodcuts (including repetitions), with woodcut initials used throughout, text in double column, black letter; bound in full red morocco by C. Lewis, aeg., spine somewhat faded; with a blind-tooled coat of arms from an early binding trimmed and mounted inside the front board identified as those of Sir James Ware (1594-1666), with a 1953 letter from William H. McCarthy Jr. of the Rosenbach Company saying as much inserted; this is the Britwell Court Library copy, sold on 31 March 1924 as lot 50; with previous owners identified in the Britwell Handlist as Lord Amherst and Richard Heber, sold by Rosenbach in 1953, reacquired subsequently by John Fleming Inc., purchased from Fleming by the current owner in 1973; a tall copy with minor internal flaws, 12 7/8 x 8 1/2 in.
