Inspired by Morris' love and admiration for the concept of the medieval book, where text was handwritten and illuminated or printed with wood engraving illustrations, bound in leather, clasped over wooden bands (in particular, Giovanni Boccacio's 'De Claris Muliebribus' printed in 1473, of which Morris had a copy). The first of the three types used for the Kelmscott Chaucer, the Troy type, appears in early specimens for 'The Franklin's Tale' from 'The Canterbury Tales', which dates from June 1891.The earliest designs for the Kelmscott Chaucer date to February 1893 when Morris produced plants and ornament designs for the border as well as the title page. Burne-Jones produced the illustrations, 87 in all (in which 85 are extant and in the Fitzwilliam Museum). The book was printed at the Kelmscott Press, Upper Mall, Hammersmith. Morris announced that four different styles of binding would be produced for the text, the most luxurious edition of 48 bound in either full or half pigskin white leather at the Doves Bindery from a design by Morris; Birmingham's edition is one such copy. Included in the inside front cover are various newspaper clippings.
One of the pinnacles of the private press movement, the illustrated edition of Chaucer was, in the words of a con- temporary critic, "the crowning achievement of the Kelmscott Press" 1 and the final masterpiece of Morris and Burne-Jones's lifelong collaboration. Given their mutual interest in Chaucer while at Oxford, and Burne-Jones's subsequent treatment of "The Legend of Goode Wimmen" (cat. nos. 28, 29) and the Romaunt of the Rose (cat. nos. 72-81), k was inevitable that they would produce an edition for the Kelmscott Press: the idea of a companion volume of Malory's Morte d' Arthur, their other major love and inspiration, was discussed but died with Morris. 2 Sydney Cockerell recorded in his diary for June 11, 1891, that Morris "thinks of printing a Chaucer from a blackletter fount which he hopes to design." A refined version of Troy type, this was ready for trial proofs in the summer of 1892, and by December the book was announced, "with about 60 designs by E. Burne- Jones." 3 These he had begun in 1891, working on them at intervals when at Rottingdean, but he underestimated the time he would need, and in November 1894 sub- scribers were informed that "it has been found necessary for the due completion of the above work to add considerably to the number of woodcuts. … There will now be upwards of seventy of these." Having finished seventy, Burne- Jones wrote to Eleanor Leighton, "In three or four weeks I can breathe and look back on a longish task; and I shall be glad and sorry." 4 The last of what proved to be eighty-seven designs was finished shortly before Christmas 1895. He had previously written to Frances Horner, "I have been calculating that the time I have given to the Chaucer work in the last two years and a half is exactly to an hour the time I should have spent in visits from Saturday to Monday at 'houses,' if I had been amiable and sociable — for I haven't let it invade the week's work, but have designed only on Sunday with very little exception — I have been happy over it; it has never tired me but refreshed me always." 5 As with Morris 8c Company stained-glass cartoons, an intermediate stage was neces- sary to translate the fine line of Burne-Jones s draftsman- ship into a form that could be followed by the engraver (the reliable W. H. Hooper). Morris brought in Robert Catterson- Smith, a versatile craftsman who later became Headmaster of the Birmingham School of Art, to make copies in pen and ink over pale platinotype pho- tographs taken by Emery Walker; these were then rephotographed onto the woodblock. Describing his job as Edward Burne-Jones, "Bless ye my children”: Chaucer, Morris, and Burne-Jones, 1896. Pen and ink, 7 x 8 in. (17.7 x 20.3 cm). Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas getting "rid of everything except the essential lines," Catterson-Smith worked literally at his master's elbow. Burne-Jones told Walker that "the cooperation between him- self and Catterson-Smith, especially as the work progressed, was so perfect that increasingly [he] thought of his assistant as a tool in his hand." 6 As they worked together, they discussed not only technical details but the whole tenor of the book, including the merits of F. S. Ellis's edition (for Morris) as against that of the leading Chaucer scholar W. W. Skeat, whose accomplishments Burne-Jones did not hold in espe- cially high regard. They also teased Morris (never a difficult task), in December 1895 both wondering whether "to begin the Chaucer over again so that we might do it better." Burne-Jones did experience genuine difficulties over some of the designs, but Morns was always impatient: "I said 'I like a thing perfect,' and [Morris] says he likes a thing done." 7 Printing had already begun in August 1894, and a second press was set up early in the following year to cope with the print run of 425 copies, increased by a hundred as Morris began to worry about the ultimate cost (which was over £7000; each of the paper copies sold for £20). Production ran into 1896, by which time Morris's health had severely declined. Rooke recorded his appearance at The Grange on March 2 as "very ghostlike, feeble Sc old looking." In response to Burne-Jones's attempt to cheer him by praising the book, Morris confessed to being "complacent about it — must try though not to be too conceited. And there's one thing that's not to be forgotten, that you backed me up well in it, old chap. If you'd been at all slack over it and hadn't been as much excited about it as I was, we should never have got through with it." 8 The first two copies were delivered to Morris and Burne-Jones on June 2, 1896, four months before Morris's death, and the book was issued at the end of the month. Burne-Jones was delighted with the result — perhaps more so than Morris — and confessed, "I love it. I turn it over page after page and gloat over it. It doesn't mat- ter whether it's a picture or a page of print, they're equally beautiful." 9 He even had the pleasure of "passing in a cab through a street up in London [and] something glorious flashed out of a shop window right into the cab, and looking at it with astonishment I had just time to see it was the Chaucer." 10 While working on the designs, he had mused, "I know quite well not ten people in the land will care twopence about it," 11 but he was of course proved wrong. The edition was fully sub- scribed by December 1894 and on its publication was widely described, by the writer Theodore Watts-Dunton among oth- ers, as "the most beautiful book ever printed." Swinburne, who had received a copy as a gift, added, "Chaucer must be danc- ing with delight round the Elysian fields." 12 F. G. Stephens judged the book to be "the finest monument to Chaucer's memory which the gratitude of his lovers has yet raised," 13 and on the same theme Burne-Jones made a celebratory drawing of Chaucer with himself and Morris, under the title "Bless ye my children." 14 1. F. G. Stephens, m Athenaeum, October 3, 1896, p. 444: "In its own style the book is, beyond dispute, the finest ever issued, and it is pleasant to know that modern artists and craftsmen can meet the printers of the fifteenth century on their own ground and beat them easily." 2. In about 1892 Burne-Jones told Frances Horner, "Now it is printing he [Morris] cares for, and to make wonderful rich-looking books . . . and if he lives the printing will have an end — but not, I hope, before Chaucer and the Morte d Arthur are done; then he'll do I don't know what, but every minute will be alive" (Horner 1933, pp. 14-15). 3. Fitzwilliam Museum 1980, p. 96; see also Peterson 1984, pp. 106-11. 4. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 259. 5. Ibid. 6. Peterson 1984, pp. xxix-xxx, where there is a detailed account of their method of working together. 7. Lago 1981, p. 64 (entry for December 5, 1895). When a visitor to the Press admired some of the later double-page illustrations, Morris warned: "Now don't you go saying that to Burne-Jones, or he'll be wanting to do the first part over again; and the worst of that would be, that he'd want to do all the rest over again, because the other would be so much better, and then we should never get done" (Mackail 1899, vol. 2, p. 322). 8. Quoted in Peterson 1984, p. in. 9. Lago 1981, p. in (entry for July 15, 1896). 10. Ibid., p. 109 (entry for ca. July 7, 1896); characteristically, Burne-Jones added: "There's very little of me in it — you know 5 A Tb of it at least is Morris's." This followed his famous remark, in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton of December 20, 1894, "When the book is done ... it will be like a pocket cathedral. My share in it is that of the carver of images at Amiens, and Morris's that of the Architect and Magister Lapicida"; quoted in Fitzwilliam Museum 1980, p. 96. 11. Undated letter to Frances Horner, Memorials, vol. 2, p. 295. 12. Letter to Morris, July 14, 1896, in The Swinburne Letters, edited by Cecil Y. Lang, vol. 6, 1890-1909 (New Haven, 1962), p. 102. W. B. Yeats, who was presented with a copy of the Chaucer by friends on his forti- eth birthday in 1905, called it "the most beautiful of all printed books" (John Kelly, ed., The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 1, 1865-189$ [Oxford, 1986], p. 348). 13. Athenaeum, October 3, 1896, p. 445. 14. There are two versions of this drawing, one with the figures alone and the other with the inscribed title and a background of a London street, part of a letter of May 2, 1896, to his daughter; both are in the collec- tion of the Bridwell Library, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, which also holds the vellum copy of the Chaucer presented by Morris to Burne-Jones in September 1896; see Bridwell Library 1996, nos. 23, 23A-L.
The Kelmscott Press Chaucer. Folio. Ornamental woodcut title, 14 large borders, 18 different frames round the illustrations, 26 initials designed by William Morris and 87 wood cut illustrations designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and engraved by W.H. Hooper. Shoulder and side titles printed in red and the whole printed in two columns in Chaucer type designed by William Morris. A work described as 'perfect ... both in design and in the quality of the printing...the last and the most magnificent, the Kelmscott Chaucer' (Printing and the Mind of Man, p.223). The most ambitious and magnificent book of the Press, the Kelmscott Chaucer was four years in the making. Morris designed the watermark for the paper, which was copied from an Italian incunable in Morris's collection and made entirely of linen by Batchelor. It took several requests before Clarendon Press granted permission to use Skeat's new edition of Chaucer. Edward Burne-Jones called the book 'a pocket cathedral - it is so full of design,' and 'the finest book ever printed; if W. M. had done nothing else it would be enough.' Burne-Jones devoted all his Sundays for almost three years to the work, and Morris came to talk with him as he drew. As the artist worked he increased the number of proposed illustrations from 48 to 60 to 72 to 87, and Morris accepted each change. The process of adapting the drawings to the woodblock, and engraving them, was entrusted to W. H. Hooper and R. Catterson-Smith, with Burne-Jones closely supervising every detail.
BOOKS PRINTED BY WILLIAM MORRIS AT THE KELMSCOTT PRESS, WITH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS DESIGNED BY SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES. Out of 53 volumes printed at the Kelmscott Press between April 4th, 1891, and March 4th, 1898, thirteen contain woodcuts designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones. Of these, the chief is - * CHAUCER. Folio; dated May 8th, and issued June 26th, 1896, with 87 Woodcuts. The copy here exhibited is one of 13 copies on vellum. It belonged to William Morris and contains his autograph - "William Morris, Sept. 2, 1896, Kelmscott House," and also that of - "Edward Burne-Jones, July 22: 1897, The Grange: Northend Rd., Fulham:"
The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, newly imprinted. "... edited by F.S. Ellis; ornamented with [87] pictures designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and engraved on wood by W.H. Hooper [some in wood-engraved compartments]. Printed by ... William Morris [in his Chaucer type with headings to the longer poems in Troy type] at the Kelmscott Press, Upper Mall, Hammersmith ... Middlesex. Finished on ... 8th ... May, 1896" -- colophon. Watermark: perch (fish) ; initials "WM" (William Morris). Printed in double columns. Rubricated running section titles in margins and initial/closing phrases to sections. Additional wood-engraved t.p. 14 large ornamental borders. 26 large initial words. Large and small initial letters. Edition of 425 copies on paper, 13 on vellum; 379 copies bound in quarter cloth with paper boards; 48 copies (including 3 on vellum) bound in pigskin at the Doves Bindery from a design by Morris.
First page of text for "The House of Fame Liber Tercius - the Invocation". Chaucer's 'House of Fame' is a surreal account of a dream in which the poet visits the palace where Fame herself sits in state. Chaucer's tour-guide to this strange corner of the medieval universe is a comically garrulous eagle, and there is even time for the pair to stop by the House of Rumour. This page shows the poet wandering among the ice that have the names of famous people inscribed - but he cannot read them because all but a few letters have thawed and disappeared (fleeting fame.).