Books

The fourth edition of Chaucer's collected works, and the definitive edition edited by the great William Thynne, Henry VIII's custodian and hunter of Chaucerian manuscripts. According to Sydney Lazarus Lee, Victorian scholar of early modern English poetry, "Thynne was the first genuine editor of Chaucer, and deserves the gratitude and respect of every student of the poet. He was unable to distinguish between the genuine and spurious work of his author, but he printed a better text of the Canterbury Tales than had been given before, and he included for the first time Chaucer's Legende, Boece, Blanche, Pity, Astrolabe,and Stedfastness." This undated (but c1550) edition was probably printed by Nicholas Hill, and publication was shared by four London publishers, William Bonham, Richard Kele, Robert Toye, and Thomas Petit. Each of these four variants bore a different colophon. The Petit variant (the present book) is the scarcest, with 12 known copies in institutional libraries (perESTC).…