The Kelmscott Chaucer

Copy for sale: Charrington–Doolittle–Price copy

peterson10 — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:10:20 +0000

Heritage Book Shop, Los Angeles, is offering, for $85,000, a quarter-linen copy with bookplates of John Charrington and H. L. Doolittle. The book was also item 78 in the Heritage Book Shop catalogue for the 45th California International Antiquarian Book Fair, 10–12 February 2012.

As far as we know, this is the first copy listed in our Census (no. 2.12) that has come up for sale since the publication of our book a year ago. It was most recently owned by Robert Salinas Price of Mexico City.

Birmingham Assay Office Library

peterson10 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:05:33 +0000

The Birmingham Assay Office Library, Newhall Street, Birmingham, has a quarter-linen copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer. There are no bookplates or other marks of previous ownership and no information about when the book was acquired by the library.

[Update, 6 February 2012: The Assay Office now has a post on its blog about the book.]

Copy for sale: Sondheim copy

peterson10 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:00:12 +0000

At its auction on 23 February 2012, Swann Galleries, New York, is offering a copy in quarter-linen binding from the library of Norman J. Sondheim, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (with his bookplate). The estimate is $30,000–$50,000.

Here is a link to the catalogue. (It’s lot 141.)

A Harvard College and Harvard Law School graduate, Norman J. Sondheim (1914–2011) spent his adult life as a businessman in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He was an executive of the Triangle Shoe Company and director of the Northeastern Symphony Orchestra.

Exhibition: Boston University, 1954

peterson10 — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:57:58 +0000

Mark Samuels Lasner has sent us a copy of a four-page leaflet describing “An Exhibition of the Work of William Morris on Loan from the Library of Miss Margaret Fish | Boston University College of Liberal Arts | Chenery Library Treasure Room | March 1 to 26, 1954.”

The leaflet supplies this information: “This collection was assembled by Frederick Perry Fish and formed part of his library that later came to his daughter, Miss Margaret Fish. The Chaucer is the only title that has been separated from the collection and this is now owned by Mr. Fish’s great granddaughter, Miss Cynthia Burbank. Through her courtesy it is included here.”

We have not located this copy of the Chaucer.

Exhibition: Two Temple Place, London

peterson10 — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:25:18 +0000

The copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer owned by the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow (Census 2.27), is now on display in an exhibition entitled “William Morris: Story, Memory, Myth” at Two Temple Place, London, 28 October 2011–29 January 2012. This is the inaugural show at Two Temple Place, which is described on its website as “London’s first venue to specifically showcase publicly-owned art from UK regional collections. The building is one of London’s hidden architectural gems, an extraordinary late Victorian mansion built by William Waldorf Astor on Embankment.”

Copy for sale: Hanson copy

peterson10 — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:53:19 +0000

Sophie Schneideman Rare Books and Prints, London, is offering a copy in the Doves binding (dated 1899) from the library of Clarence B. Hanson of Birmingham, Alabama (with his bookplate).

Her catalogue 14 is entitled Kelmscott & Doves: The Private Presses of Hammersmith 1891–1914, from the Collection of Clarence B. Hanson, Jr. of Birmingham, Alabama. The Chaucer is no. 23 in the catalogue.

Clarence Bloodworth Hanson, Jr. (1908–1983), the former publisher of the Birmingham News, was an avid collector of rare books and of private press books in particular. He was also an active supporter of the Birmingham Museum of Art. His wife endowed the Clarence B. Hanson Jr. Library at the museum in his memory.

The Silver Kelmscott Chaucer

peterson10 — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:24:15 +0000

Here’s a link to an interesting article by James Brockman about the silver binding that he and Rod Kelly created for John Keatley (Census 2.93).

The Smithsonian copy

peterson10 — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:36:32 +0000

Helena E. Wright, Curator of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, has recently contributed a post to the Museum’s blog about the rather mysterious copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer owned by the Smithsonian (2.145 in our Census). It was once in the collections of William Randolph Hearst and Clinton P. Anderson, and earlier (in 1919) had been sold “by order of Francis P. Garvan, Alien Property Custodian.” Ms. Wright — who also supplies three photographs of the binding (one of which you can see here) — is appealing for more information about the book’s history. She suspects (as do we) that this copy of the Chaucer may have been “the property of a German collector or book dealer whose assets had been seized by the U.S. government during World War I.”

The Jeweled Chaucer

peterson10 — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:12:08 +0000

One of the more elusive copies of the Chaucer is in a jeweled binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe . This is the information we have about it so far.

In 1920, Publishers’ Weekly [97 (20 March 1920): 955] reported that a Kelmscott Chaucer in a £5,000 jeweled binding was on its way to an American collector in New York. We do not know the name of the collector.

The next sighting of the book is at the David Gage Joyce sale in 1973. The catalogue entry is in our Census:

4.587 23 September 1973, Hanzel Galleries (Chicago), lot 63. The collection of David Gage Joyce. “Bound by Sangorski and Sutcliffe in brown morocco, with green morocco doublures and flyleaves, silver gilt and jewelled cornerpieces and clasps and the whole binding richly inlaid, gold tooled and set with precious stones. . . . The principal features of the front cover are the Arms of Chaucer as represented in the early folios of his collected works, and the Arms of the Cities of London and Westminster; the back cover features the Arms of Chaucer’s patron John of Gaunt, and other relevant armorial devices; the front doublure is gilt tooled with verse and border designs. The sumptuousness of this binding was achieved by the use of 700 separate pieces of inlaid leather, 7 pieces of mother-of-pearl, 109 garnets, 27 small rubies, 15 moonstones, 15 amethysts, 8 aventurines, 2 lapis lazuli, a small sapphire, and other jewels. Hinges are cracked, 1 clasp broken. In a brown morocco covered box.” (Sold to Marshall Ward for $35,000.) [See also 1978 (Borg); 23 March 1982 (Sotheby); 24 May 1983 (Sotheby); 25 June 2001 (Sotheby); 7 November 2002 (Sotheby).]

There is an error in the above passage: it was Marshall Field, not Marshall Ward, that purchased the book from the Hanzel Galleries. In 1974, it was on display at Marshall Field’s Rare Book Department, Chicago, for $100,000 (see Port Arthur, Texas News, 30 December 1974):

Also in 1974, according to Richard Cady, who was manager of the Rare Book Department of Marshall Field at the time, the hinge was repaired at the Donnelley Bindery at the Lakeside Press for $1500.

Christine Liska of Colophon Books remembers that James Borg, who had the book in 1978, sent the book to the Shah of Iran on approval. If so, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the Shah’s death, must have either interrupted or canceled the sale. Whatever happened, Sotheby’s sold it in 1982

Please let us know if you have any more information about the history or whereabouts of this book.

[Our thanks to Richard Cady and Christine Liska for their contributions.]

Talk at Library of Congress

peterson10 — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:58:56 +0000

We will be giving an illustrated talk about our Kelmscott Chaucer Census on Thursday, 29 September 2011, at 4 p.m., at the Library of Congress: the Lessing J. Rosenwald Room (LJ205), the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, 2nd Floor, Jefferson Building. The talk will be co-sponsored by the American Printing History Association (Chesapeake Chapter) and the William Morris Society in the United States.

Further information is available at the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: 202-707-2025.

Please request ADA accommodation five business days in advance. Contact 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov

[Update, 20 September 2011: Here's a link to a flyer we prepared for the occasion. Second update, 24 December 2011: Here's an account by Ray Nichols of the occasion.]