[CHAUCER, Geoffrey]. Tales from Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales Done Into Prose by Eleanor Farjeon. Illustrated by W[illiam]. Russell Flint. Published by The Medici Society, London, 1930.
First edition thus. Leather-bound. Hardcover. Tall octavo (225 x 140 x 30 mm.), pp. xii, 245, (1). English text. Exquisitely bound in full niger morocco by Riviere & Son, London (signed on the front endleaf with an ink pallet); with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, double gilt ruling and fleuron corner-pieces to the panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers and all edges gilt, elaborately illustrated with 12 full-page color plates after the drawings of William Russell Flint including tissue-guarded frontispiece. Printed by at the Mayflower Press. Provenance: Ex-libris plate of Henry and Mariana Silliman to front endleaf. Condition: FINE. An immaculate copy of a wonderful book.
Notes: First edition of Eleanor Farjeon's modern adaptation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales presented in an exquisite binding. A collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400, The Canterbury Tales is near-unanimously seen as Chaucer's magnum opus. Chaucer's use of such a wide range of classes and types of people composing the characters throughout the tales was without precedent in English and the work still offers a variety of insights into customs and practices of the time.
