The Kelmscott Chaucer

Open the Kelmscott Chaucer at its beginning and the title seems to grow out of a thicket. Pale letters rise through dark foliage on the left; opposite them, a man reading in a garden occupies a framed picture above the opening of The Canterbury Tales. Leaves surround letters, picture and verse, yet each has a different kind of space. Published in 1896 as The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer Now Newly Imprinted, the book brought William Morris’s interests in literature, lettering and ornament into one exceptionally ambitious undertaking. Geoffrey Chaucer supplied the writing; Morris designed and published the book; Edward Burne-Jones supplied its eighty-seven illustrations. ^{[1] [2]}

The book becomes more interesting when we follow the work behind those familiar names. A drawing could pass through a photographer’s camera, another artist’s pen and an engraver’s tools before reaching the printing press. A large initial had to work beside small type; a picture had to belong to the surrounding page. Morris’s own account of printing insists on the relations between paper, letters, spacing and margins. The Chaucer rewards that kind of connected looking: its smallest decisions contribute to the experience of the open book. ^[2]

It also survives in several materially different forms. An original complete copy, a detached leaf, a proof, a later binding and a modern facsimile tell different stories. Understanding those differences helps explain both the achievement of the 1896 edition and the long history through which readers now encounter it.

An opening built around reading

In the illustrated opening, the left page gives almost its whole printed area to the title. Large angular letters stand against fine branching stems, enclosed by a further border of broad leaves and clusters of fruit. The right page answers that dense surface with a more varied arrangement: a heading across the top, a rectangular picture, an enormous initial word and two columns of verse. The central fold draws these unequal pages together. Their surrounding white margins let the mass of black ornament register as a deliberately bounded shape. ^[14]

The picture gives a particularly clear demonstration of the relationship between illustration and decoration. Chaucer stands within a garden, reading from a small book. Horizontal rails cross the foreground; a tree spreads beside a circular well, and hills rise beyond the enclosure. The fine lines describing distance and the folds of the reader’s robe contrast with the heavier botanical forms of the surrounding border. Both are made from black marks and unprinted paper, but they use that common vocabulary differently. The image opens an imagined space; the ornament establishes the surface on which that space sits. ^[14]

The separate leaf photographed at the Fogg Museum makes the right-hand design easier to examine on its own. At the bottom left, the great initial Whan occupies a box considerably larger than the lines that follow it. Small leaves and stems fill the letter’s interior spaces. To its right, the verse continues above a smaller decorated initial. A reader moves from the broad heading through image and initial into ordinary lines of poetry, while the uninterrupted outer border holds the whole arrangement together. The page has several centres of attention, each appropriate to a different stage of reading. ^[15]

This opening is unusually elaborate, so it should not stand for every page in the volume. It does, however, make Morris’s governing principle visible. In his Note on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press, dated 11 November 1895, he explains that decoration must form part of the page of type. He also praises Burne-Jones for keeping that relationship in view. Ornament therefore has a practical test: it must work with a reader’s passage through the book. The opening’s sequence of heading, picture, initial and verse gives substance to that claim. ^[2]

Chaucer’s writing and Morris’s edition

Calling this “Morris’s Chaucer” is convenient, provided it does not obscure the author. The writing is Chaucer’s; the edition is a late nineteenth-century presentation of it. Its full title promises the Works, extending beyond the familiar Canterbury Tales. Sydney Cockerell’s account of the press identifies F. S. Ellis as editor and records the use of the smaller Chaucer type for the main text, with Troy type for headings to longer poems. These are editorial and typographical responsibilities within a publishing project, distinct from the authorship of the medieval poetry. ^[2]

Morris and Burne-Jones had a longstanding shared enthusiasm for Chaucer. The 1998 exhibition catalogue Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer relates the edition to their interest as Oxford students and to Burne-Jones’s earlier work on Chaucerian subjects. It also records discussions of a companion edition of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, which did not come to fruition. The published Chaucer belongs within that continuing literary conversation, rather than appearing suddenly as an exercise in elaborate printing. ^[3]

One small connection reaches back to the beginning of their adult friendship. The University of Maryland’s exhibition explains that Burne-Jones’s illustration of the Prioress’s Tale drew on the scene he had painted on the wardrobe given to William and Jane Morris for their wedding in 1859. A subject that had already been worked out on furniture returned in a new medium and format. Its reappearance demonstrates how a shared imaginative world could continue across decades without requiring the book to copy the earlier object mechanically. ^[4]

The editorial work also belongs to the history. The 1998 catalogue describes conversations about Ellis’s treatment of Chaucer and its relationship to W. W. Skeat’s scholarship. A book with such conspicuous pictures and borders could still prompt detailed argument about its text. For readers interested in Morris’s literature, this matters: the Chaucer joins literary judgement to the making of a physical book. ^[3]

A typeface made to fit the task

The Chaucer’s small blackletter was a response to an actual difficulty. Cockerell records that early trial pages used Morris’s larger Troy type. In January 1892, trials from The Cook’s Tale and Sir Thopas demonstrated that it was too large for the projected book. Morris then had the design cut in the smaller size known as pica. A further trial, from The Knight’s Tale, placed the text in double columns of fifty-eight lines and proved satisfactory. The shape of the finished volume emerged through such tests. ^[2]

Morris designed the letters; Edward Prince cut the punches. Cockerell dates Prince’s work on the smaller Chaucer type to February–May 1892 and says that it was ready in June. Although named for this major project, the type appeared elsewhere before the Chaucer was finished, including the chapter list and glossary of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. The font’s name and its first use are therefore separate pieces of history. ^[2]

Morris’s Note explains the reasoning behind his Gothic letters. He admired early printers whose characters avoided excessive compression and spiky forms. He wished to retain the strength of blackletter while making it readable, limiting contractions and tied letters. The Chaucer type reduced the scale of Troy to meet the needs of a double-columned book. That relationship is more precise than describing it as vaguely “medieval”: a new type was designed and manufactured for a specific nineteenth-century publication, drawing critically on earlier examples. ^[2]

The smaller letters also required care in setting. Morris wanted only enough space between words to distinguish them clearly, and as much consistency as possible. He objected to the conspicuous channels of white that can run through poorly spaced text. For the Chaucer and other double-columned books he allowed a very thin, or “hair”, lead between lines. The darkness of the printed page was therefore controlled through several related decisions, rather than produced by choosing an ornate alphabet alone. ^[2]

These considerations change how the elaborate opening looks. Beside the enormous initial, the ordinary verse forms a compact, even texture. The initial’s large pale strokes separate themselves from its dark internal foliage; the text works at a much smaller scale through repeated letters and narrow intervals. The two require different designs to coexist. The reading surface would be harder to understand if every component demanded attention with the same weight. ^{[14] [15]}

Borders, frames and the space between them

The edition’s ornament constitutes a system with several jobs. Cockerell lists fourteen large borders, eighteen different frames around illustrations and twenty-six large initial words designed by Morris for the Chaucer. The University of Maryland records 556 pages, eighty-seven illustrations, fourteen large and eighteen smaller borders, and twenty-six large initial words, with printing in black and red. Its phrase “smaller borders” should be read alongside Cockerell’s more specific description of picture frames. These figures describe the varied repertoire from which the pages were composed. ^{[2] [4]}

The first page offers a close view of that repertoire in action. Its outer border uses substantial leaves and fruit clusters, while the picture frame has a finer, curling rhythm. The large initial gathers still smaller growth into the shape of a word. Differences in scale keep the layers distinguishable even though their stems and leaves create a strong family resemblance. Morris can fill a large area densely because the parts have recognisable boundaries and contrasting weights. ^[15]

The process of designing this apparatus took time. Cockerell records an abandoned attempt at the first folio border on 1 February 1893. Three days later Morris began the vine border for the opening page and completed it in about a week, together with Whan, the heading and the first picture’s frame. Hooper engraved these elements together on one block. The account describes a page conceived as an ensemble, with decisions about lettering and surrounding ornament made in close sequence. ^[2]

The large title came much later. Morris began designing it in the middle of February 1896, finished on 27 February, and Hooper engraved it in March. A reader encounters it before the first line of verse, although it was among the late elements to be completed. The order of a book’s making does not necessarily follow the order of its pages. That late title nevertheless answers the earlier first-page design so forcefully that the opening appears inseparable. ^[2]

Morris’s account of margins helps explain the effect. He considered the pair of facing pages the unit of book design. His preferred arrangement placed the narrowest margin at the inner edge, followed by progressively wider margins at the top, outer edge and bottom. This was his stated rule, grounded in his reading of older books. In the photographed opening, the dark printed areas meet closely across the fold while a wider field of paper surrounds them. The white space contributes to the design as actively as the foliage. ^{[2] [14]}

How a pencil drawing became a printed picture

Burne-Jones’s eighty-seven illustrations were realised as wood engravings by William Harcourt Hooper. The familiar term “woodcut” in contemporary descriptions must not imply that Burne-Jones cut the blocks himself. The 1998 catalogue explains an intervening sequence: Emery Walker photographed the drawings; Robert Catterson-Smith prepared stronger pen-and-ink versions over pale photographs; these were rephotographed onto the wood for the engraver. Each participant performed a specific act of translation. ^[3]

Maryland’s exhibition describes Catterson-Smith using a wash of Chinese white over the photograph before reworking the image in bolder lines. The problem was to carry the delicate shading of an original drawing into a language that could be engraved and printed. A subtle pencil transition cannot simply become an identical mark in a relief print. It has to be represented through the strength, direction and spacing of printable lines. ^[4]

The visible portrait of Chaucer makes the consequences tangible. Parallel lines describe the distant sky and hills; shorter strokes articulate leaves, clothing and the well. The figure remains legible against an intricately worked garden because different textures occupy different areas. Around the picture, the floral frame uses broader changes between light and dark. Looking closely at this single leaf brings the distinction between a drawn image and its printed realisation into focus, even without pretending to reconstruct every decision of its makers. ^[15]

Catterson-Smith worked closely with Burne-Jones, who revised the translated designs. The 1998 catalogue describes an increasingly sympathetic working relationship as the project advanced. His task required judgement about which lines carried the image, alongside an ability to preserve another artist’s intention through a change of medium. Crediting him clarifies how Burne-Jones’s distinctive figures could remain recognisable within the strong graphic language demanded by the book. ^[3]

The ornament had its own engravers. Cockerell names C. E. Keates, Hooper and W. Spielmeyer in connection with Morris’s Chaucer designs. He also explains that recurring initials and ornaments across the Kelmscott books were printed from electrotypes, while most title pages and initial words were printed directly from wood. An electrotype supplied a metal printing duplicate of a relief design. The press combined painstaking drawing and engraving with reproductive methods that supported repeated use. ^[2]

Paper and the work of the press

Morris’s specifications began with the paper. In his Note, he describes wanting handmade linen paper, well sized and laid, with the mould’s wire lines present but unobtrusive. He names Batchelor of Little Chart in Kent as the maker who realised his requirements. Cockerell adds that the Chaucer needed a stouter, slightly larger paper than the press’s earlier stock and describes its watermark as a perch holding a spray in its mouth. This is contemporary written testimony about the material specification; a photograph of an opaque page cannot establish a watermark or furnish a fibre analysis. ^[2]

The connection between paper and print is easy to overlook in a digital image. Morris considered durability and appearance together, and treated paper quality as a fundamental choice. The Chaucer’s extensive areas of lettering, engraved line and ornament would all have to print on the selected surface. Its support was therefore part of the working design, alongside the type and the blocks. The same image reproduced on another paper can communicate the arrangement while offering a different physical encounter. ^[2]

The Kelmscott Press operated in Upper Mall, Hammersmith. Cockerell locates the Chaucer’s first sheet at 14 Upper Mall and the additional press used from January 1895 at number 21. “Kelmscott” should not transport this printing work to Morris’s Oxfordshire country house. These London premises accommodated a practical undertaking involving type, blocks, paper and presses over an extended production period. ^[2]

The work also belonged to trained printing staff. Cockerell’s early history names William Bowden as compositor and pressman and his son W. H. Bowden, who became overseer. Their separate jobs make the organisation of the workshop visible, although the early history does not identify every pressman who subsequently worked on the Chaucer. Designing the publication, setting its type and operating its presses remained distinct responsibilities. ^[2]

Four years of development, then production

There is no single starting date that explains the whole undertaking. Cockerell records Morris discussing a blackletter Chaucer in June 1891. Trials followed in 1892, and a specimen of the first page was shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in October–November 1893. Actual printing of the first sheet began on 8 August 1894. A claim that the book took four years refers to its development as well as its time on the presses. ^[2]

Its intended extent grew. The December 1892 announcement envisaged about sixty illustrations by Burne-Jones. In November 1894 subscribers were told that the number would rise above seventy and that another hundred copies would be printed, taking the paper edition from 325 to 425. They were offered an opportunity to withdraw their orders. According to Cockerell, none did; the additional copies were taken up, and the December list announced that all paper copies were sold. The edition’s scale developed through continuing decisions about pictures, production and subscribers. ^[2]

An additional press began work on 8 January 1895. Cockerell says that two presses thereafter worked almost exclusively on the Chaucer. Meanwhile Burne-Jones continued the illustrations, the final one being completed shortly before Christmas 1895 according to the 1998 catalogue. Designing, translating, engraving and printing thus overlapped. The book’s makers had to coordinate stages that reached completion at different times. ^{[2] [3]}

Three dates mark the final transition. Printing finished on 8 May 1896. The first two completed copies reached Morris and Burne-Jones on 2 June. The edition was issued on 26 June. “Completed”, “delivered” and “published” can therefore refer to different moments without contradiction. Morris lived to see the book; his death followed on 3 October that year. ^{[2] [3] [4]}

The paper copies were offered at twenty pounds each. The 1998 catalogue places the eventual production cost above £7,000. These historical figures convey the financial scale of the enterprise without requiring a misleading conversion into present-day money. A carefully made book could embody Morris’s commitment to the quality of work while remaining an expensive publication with a limited circulation. Its ambitious production and its restricted availability are both part of its history. ^{[2] [3]}

Sunday work and a shared imaginative world

The collaboration had an informal rhythm as well as a production schedule. The 1998 catalogue draws on Burne-Jones’s letters to describe his habit of reserving Sundays for the Chaucer illustrations. Maryland also describes Morris visiting while Burne-Jones worked, talking and reading aloud. These accounts place the designs within a continuing exchange between friends. The letters are known here through those published discussions, rather than through an independent reading of the original correspondence. ^{[3] [4]}

The catalogue preserves differences of temperament within that friendship. Burne-Jones could want more time to perfect an image; Morris could press for completion. It also describes their joking suggestion, late in the undertaking, that they might start the book again and improve it. Such evidence gives the achievement human dimensions. A closely integrated book could arise through disagreement, revision and encouragement, alongside shared enthusiasms. ^[3]

Burne-Jones’s celebrated description of the projected volume as a “pocket cathedral” comes from an 1894 letter to Charles Eliot Norton, quoted by Maryland’s exhibition. It is a comparison to contemplate rather than a literal description of portability. The phrase connects concentrated design with an architectural experience: parts of different kinds contribute to a larger whole. It also expresses the illustrator’s admiration for Morris’s ornament while the undertaking was still unfinished. ^[4]

Contemporary admiration extended beyond the collaborators. The 1998 catalogue records enthusiastic responses from the writer Theodore Watts-Dunton and the critic F. G. Stephens, who understood the volume as an outstanding achievement in printing and a tribute to Chaucer. These responses belong to the book’s early reception: they show what particular readers valued, while leaving later readers free to judge the dense pages for themselves. Burne-Jones, too, enjoyed discovering his completed book displayed in a London shop window. ^[3]

In 1896, Burne-Jones drew a humorous scene of Chaucer blessing himself and Morris. The 1998 catalogue reproduces the cartoon, dated 1896, with the medieval poet above the two modern collaborators. Its affectionate joke restores Chaucer to the centre of a project often discussed through the later artists’ names. They could celebrate the object as their joint achievement while imagining themselves accountable to the writer whose works it presented. ^[3]

Original copies and their different bindings

The paper issue comprised 425 copies. The vellum figure requires qualification: Cockerell, the William Morris Gallery and the 1998 catalogue give thirteen, while William S. Peterson and Sylvia Holton Peterson’s 2011 census introduction states fifteen; Maryland follows that later figure. These sources should not be combined into a single unqualified total. The later census’s public introduction does not explain the discrepancy copy by copy, so thirteen and fifteen remain identifiable conventions in the published record. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]}

Binding adds another distinction. Cockerell describes the ordinary issue in half holland. The William Morris Gallery’s K20 is a paper copy in that form, purchased in 1951. Its restrained covering belongs to an original edition of the same designed text and illustrations. The elaborate white pigskin binding was a special option, rather than a universal feature by which an authentic Chaucer can be recognised. ^{[1] [2]}

Morris initially intended four special binding designs, according to Cockerell: two for execution under Cobden-Sanderson’s direction at the Doves Bindery and two for J. & J. Leighton. He completed only the full white pigskin design. Cockerell records forty-eight copies bound at the Doves Bindery, including two on vellum. This is more specific than the Gallery’s statement that forty-eight paper copies received the binding; the contemporary account is useful for keeping binding totals separate from the paper/vellum issue totals. ^{[1] [2]}

Individual copies have their own histories within the edition. The 1998 catalogue identifies the Morgan’s PML 76849 as a copy presented by Morris to Sydney Cockerell on 7 July 1896, subsequently given by John M. Crawford Jr. in 1975. It also describes Birmingham’s specially bound copy, presented by Colonel and Mrs Wilkinson in memory of Norman Wilkinson in 1934. Those histories concern particular volumes. They cannot be attached to an unidentified photograph simply because it shows the same printed opening. ^[3]

Leaves, later bindings and facsimiles

The Petersons’ census sought to trace copies, describe their bindings and reconstruct their ownership. Their introductory statement reports locating approximately two-thirds of the printing. That work treats a book as an object with a continuing history: ownership marks, repairs and rebinding can distinguish one copy from another even when the underlying edition is the same. The census is a record of surviving evidence, rather than a guarantee that every original volume has been located. ^[5]

An instructive complication appears in the Leighton ledgers, transcribed by the Petersons. An entry of 21 May 1897 records Chaucer vellum waste sheets made up into two volumes in half holland, with cleaning and repairs. The entry demonstrates that sheets could acquire a book-like form after the main publication. It does not, by itself, explain the thirteen-versus-fifteen vellum discrepancy, and should not be made to do so. It supplies a concrete reason to distinguish an issued copy from a later assembly of printing material. ^[16]

A detached leaf offers another kind of access. The Fogg image allows close attention to a single opening page, with its own photographed edges and presentation. It preserves a real relation between text, picture and ornament, but removes the facing title, the turn of pages and the scale of the complete volume. A leaf can be studied as a print while its original function within a bound book remains essential to understanding its design. ^[15]

Facsimiles extend that history further. In a 2021 note, the Petersons distinguish the Basilisk Press facsimile of 1974 from the Folio Society reproduction of 2002, recording a connection between the later reproduction and a particular Basilisk copy. An image that faithfully repeats Morris’s layout can therefore represent a later edition. Date, publisher, material and binding need their own identification; visual resemblance alone cannot establish an 1896 original. ^[17]

These differences also offer different ways to read the work. A complete copy restores the designed succession of openings. A single leaf reveals the exact meeting of line, letter and foliage. A facsimile makes extended visual comparison possible, while asking its reader to remember the change of material and production. In each case, the most revealing question is how the object in front of us carries Chaucer’s writing through the decisions of the people who made it.