The Classic Text: Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Classic Text: Traditions and Interpretations

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 1340?-1400.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Rendered into Modern English Verse by Frank Ernest Hill. London: Printed for the Limited Editions Club, 1934. 2 Volumes.
Call Number: (SPL) PR 1872 .H5 1934
Gift of Loryn Romadka, from the collection of Austin F. Lutter.
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

*149k*

*134k*

This is the first of two productions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales published by the Limited Editions Club, and is limited to an edition of 1500 copies.

The translator, Frank Earnest Hill, published his translations of four tales in 1930 for Longmans Publishers. Due to the scholarly acclaim affixed to his translations, The Limited Editions Club commissioned Hill to complete the remaining nineteen tales, published for the first time in this edition.

The Limited Editions Club chose not to illustrate this edition of The Canterbury Tales. George Macy, founder of the Club wrote of that decision:

There are no illustrations. In the first place, we are willing to indulge in an argument with anybody to the effect that it is as impossible properly to illustrate Chaucer as it is impossible properly to illustrate the Bible. In the second place, Mr. Jones [the printer of this edition] wanted to demonstrate how beautifully he could make a book without pictures.

The Limited Editions Club also issued a companion volume of Troilus and Cressida in 1939 in an identical design by the same printer, George W. Jones.

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Last edited on Tuesday, October 30, 2001.