WORKS OF GEOFFREY CHAUCER. [Together With,] A COMPANION VOLUME TO THE KELMSCOTT CHAUCER by Duncan Robinson by [Kelmscott Press; Basilisk Press] Chaucer Geoffrey - 1974, 1975

London: The Basilisk Press, 1974, 1975. 2 volumes. FIRST BASILISK PRESS EDITION, A LIMITED EDITION, AND THE FINEST FACSIMILE PRODUCTION OF THE GREAT KELMSCOTT PRESS CHAUCER. This being one of only 515 copies printed. The Chaucer is illustrated just as the original with 87 wood-engravings after Sir Edward Burne-Jones, redrawn by Robert Catterson-Smith and cut by W.H. Hooper, wood-engraved title page, fourteen large woodcut borders, eighteen different woodcut frames around the illustrations, twenty-six nineteen-line initial words, and numerous three-line, six-line and ten-line woodcut initial letters, and woodcut printer's device, all designed by William Morris and cut by C.E Keates, W.H. Hooper, and W. Spielmeyer, with shoulder and side titles. Printed in red and black in Chaucer type, the titles of longer poems printed in Troy type. Text in double columns. The companion volume is illustrated with two tipped in portraits and 85 tipped in plates reproduced from the original pencil drawings by Burne-Jones and with several other illustrations within the text. Large folios (423 x 292 mm), uniformly bound in the original floral patterned red and tan 'Larkspur' patterned cloth, designed by William Morris in 1874, with gray paper spine labels lettered in black. The two volumes housed together in a fine slipcase of hard boards covered in blue paper. A set of extra labels tipped in. [4], ii, [2], 554, [1]; 146, [2] pp. An absolutely pristine and as mint set, both volumes perfect in all regards. The slipcase very handsome, strong and solid with only the lightest evidence of age. THE MAGNIFICENT AND BEST FACSIMILE OF THE KELMSCOTT CHAUCER, "the most famous book of the modern private press movement, and the culmination of William Morris's endeavor" -(The Artist and the Book).
This fine and full-size facsimile was printed for The Basilisk Press, London, by The John Roberts Press in Clerkenwell and completed on the 31st day of December, 1974. The blocks made by John Swain and Son, London. The paper specially made at Saint Cuthbert's Mill at Wells in Somerset by The Inveresk Paper Group. The cloth printed by Liberty of London, and the binding executed by A.W. Lumsden in Edinburgh from designs by and under the direction of, Peter Guy.
Much has been written of the famed Kelmscott Chaucer, considered by many to be the most beautiful book produced in the English language. "[F]rom first appearance, the Chaucer gained a name as the finest book since Gutenberg. It has held its place near the head of the polls ever since...The terms which critics used in the eighteen-nineties to welcome it simply show us what an impression Morris's printing made upon late Victorian bookmen" (Colin Franklin, The Private Presses, p. 43).
The Kelmscott Press produced forty-eight books in its brief life. Morris had toyed with the idea of a Shakespeare in three folio volumes; a suggestion for a King James version of the Bible was in his pending file; and preliminary work had begun on editions of Froissart and Malory, both of which would have formed a triumvirate with the Chaucer. But on October 3, 1896, Morris died, and for all intents and purposes the Kelmscott Press died with him, the Froissart and Malory unfinished. The Chaucer, regretfully, remained the only "titan" among Kelmscott books.
Morris dedicated his life to poetry and the decorative arts, but he did not exhibit an active interest in the design and production of books until he was fifty-five years old. He died eight years later, but in that brief fragment of time he established a standard and prestige that still make him one of the most powerful and pervasive influences in book design in the English-speaking, English-reading world.