Ellesmere Chaucer Monochromatic Facsimile

The Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales is the most famous literary treasure in the Huntington Library's collections. The manuscript's 464 text pages are embellished with floriated borders, illuminated initials, and other decorations, as well as twenty-three portraits of the pilgrim-storytellers. The Huntington Library and the Yushodo Co., Ltd., of Japan produced a color facsimile of this beautiful manuscript in 1995. The transparencies that were the basis of the landmark color facsimile were used to make a full-sized, monochromatic facsimile. Elegantly printed by the Stinehour Press of Lunenberg, Vermont, it conveys the trim, texture, and decoration of the original manuscript pages. It features a color frontispiece of the page that begins the Knight's Tale. Both the color and monochromatic versions of the facsimile were edited by Daniel Woodward and Martin Stevens.

484 pages, 12 x 17-1/2, cloth, $275.00, 0-87328-162-4.
Write or e-mail for information on the color facsimile.

The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation
edited by Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward

First published in conjunction with the color facsimile of the Ellesmere Chaucer, this book features essays by fourteen internationally known British, American, and Japanese scholars who examine various aspects of the manuscript from its physical construction to its relationship to contemporary literary practice. The essays treat the most current theories about the manuscript's text and language, ordering of the tales, decoration and illustration, and provenance and reports on the conservation work that was done on the manuscript while the 1995 color facsimile was in the making. Introductory essays and appendices explain the significance and construction of the facsimile. Together, the volume of essays and the facsimiles establish a benchmark for the study of Chaucer.

378 pages, 8-1/2 x 11, illus., 11 x 32-inch color foldout:

Paper, $25.00, 0-87328-166-7

Review notes on this edition:

See a complete review from the scholarly journal, Studies in the Age of Chaucer

"This is indeed a generous scholarly offering, and the physical proportions and features of the book (designed to accompany the facsimile) are commensurately generous. Stevens and Woodward are to be congratulated on having assembled such a collection of authoritative pronouncements on the Ellesmere MS...This book will set a benchmark in Chaucer studies."—A. A. MacDonald, English Studies, Nov. '97.

Canterbury Pilgrims Poster

This 11 x 32-inch folded color poster reproduces all twenty-three of the famous storytellers, including Chaucer himself, in full size as they appear in the Ellesmere manuscript.

11 x 32 inches, $6.95

More medieval studies available in the current Books in Print