Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 2nd edn
(Westminster: William Caxton, 1483)
A rare, hand-coloured Caxton edition — one of the most beautiful survivors of England’s first printing press
St John’s College owns one of the exceptionally rare complete copies of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. This poem is arguably the most famous work of Middle English literature. William Caxton (d. 1492), the first Englishman to print books and to establish a printing press in England, introduced woodcuts of the pilgrims in his second edition. In St John’s copy, these woodcuts retain their contemporary hand-colouring, placing the volume among the most important copies of Caxton’s Chaucer.
Written between 1390 and 1400, the poem tells of a pilgrimage to Canterbury, during which the travellers entertain one another with stories. The General Prologue introduces an array of characters reflecting late medieval English society, and the tales themselves are written in a variety of literary styles linked to the pilgrims’ social standing. The work is both highly regarded for its literary merit and enjoyed for its bawdy—and at times even puerile—humour.
One of the best-known protagonists is the Wife of Bath. Scholars remain divided as to whether her portrayal and her tale should be read primarily in the context of medieval misogyny, or whether the Wife of Bath can be interpreted as a ‘proto-feminist’ figure.
This copy was originally owned by Roger Thorney, a London merchant, before passing into the possession of Sir William Paddy (d. 1634). Paddy, a St John’s alumnus and major benefactor to the Library—whose portrait is displayed at the end of the Old Library—donated over 800 volumes from his private collection to the College.
A full digitization of this volume, which also contains Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and the Caxton print of Quattuor sermones, together with a manuscript copy of John Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, is available at Digital Bodleian.