Art Institute of Chicago

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer Now Newly Imprinted

William Morris (English, 1834–1896)

Date

1896

Medium

Hand-printed book on Batchelor linen paper, bound with tooled white pigskin on oak board

Culture

England

Department

Ryerson and Burnham Libraries Special Collections

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer Now Newly Imprinted is the magnum opus of the artist William Morris, a prominent figure in the 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. The book is popularly known as the Kelmscott Chaucer because it was printed at the Kelmscott Press founded by Morris. The Kelmscott Press epitomized Morris’s appreciation for quality and sophisticated design, construction, and hand-printing skills at risk of being lost to mechanization. He created at least three of the typefaces present in the book in addition to the enlarged initials and the borders that embellish the pages throughout the text. The black and red typeface, named “Chaucer,” was meant to imitate early English fonts while remaining legible to 19th-century audiences. Morris made design choices assiduously, even taking care to ensure that the book’s ink was created without contemporary chemicals so that it would more closely resemble the ink quality in medieval books. Morris’s friend and collaborator Edward Burne-Jones provided the drawings for the 87 wood engravings cut by William Harcourt Hooper to print the illustrations. The original edition of 425 copies was printed in 1896; this copy is one of only 48 elaborately bound in white pigskin.

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