1. [The Canterbury Tales. Printed at Westminster by William Caxton, about 1478.]

The text begins with the first line of the book, and there is no prefatory note or colophon, to give a clue to the name of the work, its place of publication, its printer, or the date of its production. The date and the name of the printer, however, are determined by the type, which is a font used by Caxton in books printed at Westminster between the years 1475 and 1481. This type, known as Type No. 2, because it was the second employed by him (the first used for printing books in England), is like the characters in manuscripts written in Bruges in the fifteenth century, and called "Gros BÂtarde." Colard Mansion, the earliest printer of Bruges, used a font of similar style, and Caxton probably formed his type on the same models, if, indeed, he did not procure it from Mansion himself, with whom he learned the new art of printing. But we may also identify our printer by means of his own statement made in the signed "Prohemye" to the second edition of the work, printed in 1484 (?), where, in speaking of the difficulty of obtaining a pure text, he makes an interesting criticism of this, the first edition. He says:

"For I fynde many of the sayd bookes, whyche wry- " ters haue abrydgyd it and many thynges left out, And in " som-tildee place haue sette certayn versys, that he neuer made ne sette " in hys booke, of whyche bookes so incorrecte was one brought to me vj yere passyd, whyche I supposed had ben veray true & cor- " recte, And accordyne to the same I dyde do enprynte a certayn " nombre of them, whyche anon were sold to many and dyuerse " gentyl men, of whome one gentylman cam to me, and said that " this book was not accordyn in many places vnto the book that " Gefferey chaucer had made, To whom I answerd that I had ma-" de it accordyng to my copye, and by me was nothyng added ne " mynusshyd."

According to the arrangement of William Blades, this is the tenth work of England's first printer, and the fifth printed on English soil. It was printed after his return from Bruges, whither he had gone as a mercer, and where he turned printer and editor. Few of the books from his press exceed it in size and beauty. Nine copies are known; two are in the British Museum, one in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, one in Merton College, Oxford, and five in private libraries. Of all these only two are in perfect condition.

The volume has no signatures, folios or catchwords, and the lines are unevenly spaced. The rubrication of the initial letters was done by hand.

In the matter of purity of text this edition is inferior to the second, as Caxton himself thus early recognized; the manuscript from which it was printed, Tyrwhitt tells us, "happened unluckily to be one of the worst in all respects that [he] could possibly have met with." But however that may be, the Canterbury Tales is entitled to a chief place among English books as presenting the first printed text of Chaucer, who, "by hys labour enbelysshyd, ornated, and made faire our englisshe."

Folio. Black letter.

Collation: 371 leaves; sixteen of which are in facsimile.