Canterbury Tales (Caxton edition)

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, published by William Caxton in 1477, the first printed edition. An earlier manuscript version can be found here: https://archive.org/details/canterburytales_ellesmere/ Page images from https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/f7c02454-770e-47d1-8737-4a820cb71bed/ Description from the Bodleian Library's website: A copy of the first edition of William Caxton’s printing of the Canterbury Tales, one of the first books printed in England. Only around 21 copies of this edition survive, of which Merton College’s copy is one of the best-preserved. This copy contains unusually elaborate decoration added by hand, including gold illumination, floral borders and hand-drawn red and blue initials. This decoration was probably commissioned by or for a member of the London Company of Haberdashers: the arms of the Haberdashers’ appear in the decoration on the first leaf, and devices associated with the Haberdashers (Catherine Wheels and brushes) are incorporated in the decorative borders on other folios. The text of this edition, which Caxton subsequently condemned as containing errors, has been corrected throughout in a fifteenth- or early-sixteenth century hand, with missing words and lines supplied in the margins. There are also errors in the binding, with some pages appearing in the wrong order. An attempt to correct this in the 19th century, when replacements for three missing leaves were inserted, corrected some of these errors but introduced others, so the text sometimes jumps around from tale to tale. The book is believed to have been given to the College in 1620-1630 by Alderman William Wright (c.1561–1635), former Mayor of Oxford. It was previously owned by “Humfraye Cole”, whose name appears on fol. 197v.