Chaucer, The workes, London, 1598, contemporary calf gilt, Theophila Coke's copy

Geoffrey Chaucer

The workes... newly printed. In this impression you shall find these additions: 1. His portraiture and progenie shewed. 2. His life collected. 3. Arguments to every booke gathered. 4. Old and obscure words explaned. 5. Authors by him cited, declared. 6. Difficulties opened. 7. Two bookes of his, never before printed [edited by Thomas Speght]. London: Adam Islip, at the charges of Thomas Wight, 1598

folio (308 x 195mm.), Black Letter, title within woodcut border, engraved portrait of Chaucer, woodcut initials and tailpieces, without initial and final blank leaves, section titles to the Canterbury Tales, the Romaunt of the Rose and the Story of Thebes within large woodcut border, full-page woodcut armorial on A6v, contemporary calf with gilt arabesque centrepiece, some deckle edges, a few small tears and repairs (that on B6 within the text but without loss), occasional light browning, binding slightly rubbed and rebacked

For an earlier edition of Chaucer's works, see lot 140. This later edition contains additional editorial apparatus, including a glossary of "hard words" and Chaucer's literary sources, and no longer contains woodcuts of the narrators of the Canterbury Tales, but most significantly it was the first edition to contain a biography of Chaucer. The two additional works "never before printed", The Floure and the Leafe and Chaucer's Dream, are now considered spurious. The portrait of Chaucer by John Speed was most likely based on his monument in Westminster Abbey.

LITERATURE:

ESTC S111945; STC 5079

PROVENANCE:

"Theo. Coke", early inscription on title-page, i.e. Lady Theophila Coke (1596-1643); Robert Vaughan Hughes (1819-1901), Wyelands (Monmouthshire), armorial bookplate; by family descent

Lady Theophila Coke was the daughter of Sir Thomas Berkeley and Elizabeth Carey, and she married Sir Robert Coke. They were childless so their library (including books from Robert's father, Sir Edward) housed at Durdans in Surrey went to George Berkeley, Earl of Berkeley who donated books to Sion College in 1682; the antiquarian books are now in Lambeth Palace Library which holds several other books owned by Theophila. George Berkeley's bequest included a late fifteenth-century manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, which it is thought was also owned by Theophila (sale of Sion College books, Sotheby's, 13 June 1977, lot 73, now on deposit at Yale). This particular book does not contain Berkeley's donation booklabel and never went to Sion College.