Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales, edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt, 1798 For Sale

The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. To which are added an essay on his language and versification, and an introductory discourse: together with notes and a glossary.

Geoffrey Chaucer, edited and introduced by Thomas Tyrwhitt, Esq. F.R.S.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1798
Condition: Very Good plus in truly find bindings

This is the spectacularly handsome, finely bound, two-volume, second edition of Tyrwhitt's landmark Chaucer. This edition was produced posthumously, incorporating Tyrwhitt's own "emendations and additions". As explained by the publisher, "The Delegates of the Clarendon Press having been applied to, that the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, as published by the late Mr. Tyrwhitt, might be printed at Oxford more splendidly than had been done in the Edition of them in his life-time, they readily acceded to the proposal both in compliance with the wishes expressed to them, and out of their own desire to shew every respect on the part of the University to Mr. Tyrwhitt's name and abilities."

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were already a venerable 400 years old when literary editor and critic Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730–1786) produced his landmark edition. The edition lends aesthetic and sheer physical gravitas to the text. Each mammoth volume measures 11.25 inches tall, 9 inches wide, and weighs more than four pounds. The bindings are a modern full brown leather, the spines featuring raised bands bracketed by double gilt rules, the second and fourth compartments featuring twin red title and volume number labels, the other four compartments featuring uniform gilt fleuron center tools. The contents are bound with marbled page edges, light brown endpapers, and silk head and tail bands. Condition of the bindings is truly fine, with only the slightest hint of shelf wear to the bottom edges. Condition of the 1798 contents is very good plus, complete and clean overall, with minimal spotting and toning. The only defect of note is some moisture staining, which seems mercifully confined to the blank preliminary and succeeding blank recto of the frontispiece in Volume I.

Thomas Tyrwhitt's "edition... to which are added an essay upon his language and versification, an introductory discourse and notes in four volumes, was published in 1775... Recognizing... the carelessness of the scholarship that preceded his, Tyrwhitt 'proceeded', as he claims in the preface, 'as if his author had never been published before', collating all available manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales in order to make his text 'as correct as the mss within the reach of the editor would enable him to make it' (preface)... Tyrwhitt's greatest contribution lies perhaps in his contextualization of Chaucer's language and of his Tales. He saw the necessity, he states, of enquiring 'into the state of our language and versification at the time when Chaucer wrote', as well as of examining 'the peculiarities of his style and manner of composition', and his notes and glossary focus closely on Chaucerian contexts (preface). In its own time Tyrwhitt's Chaucer was hailed 'the best edited English Classic that ever has appeared', while subsequent editors overlooked anything before Tyrwhitt, incorporating his work into their own."

Tyrwhitt's Chaucer continues to be regarded: In 2025, a scholar wrote "The essay on versification in Thomas Tyrwhitt’s 1775 edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is one origin point for the modern field of English historical metrics. Tyrwhitt brings to bear a principle that was to influence subsequent generations of researchers down to the present day: meter and language have a history, and that history can guide verse aesthetics."

References: ODNB; Weiskott, "'Coins of a Former Age': Thomas Tyrwhitt’s “Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer” (1775) and English Historical Metrics

Ref #: 008521
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