Folio (314 x 213 mm).  Black letter, text double column. Woodcut illustration for The Knight's Tale (leaf B1, first used in the 1550 edition), woodcut initials.  (Lacking [fleuron]1-4, A1 and A6, A2-5 and 3U gatherings soiled and frayed with repairs, tiny wormholes to several leaves affecting letters, a few leaves with marginal repairs occasionally affecting letters, 2G1 with small hole just affecting letters.) Modern half brown calf stamp-signed by J. P. Gray & Son (some light wear or staining). Provenance: Anthony Standen (ca 1548 - ?), English intelligencer (early signatures on final leaf); Willi Drewe (ex-dono inscription).

THE EDITION OF CHAUCER LIKELY USED BY SHAKESPEARE AS A SOURCE FOR TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

Fifth edition of the Collected Works, one of two recorded issues with this date: as here, with the preliminaries collating A6, and another with preliminary woodcuts and with preliminaries collating A4. Traditionally, it has been believed that the illustrated issue was printed first, with the cuts omitted in the second issue.  More recent scholarship suggests that the printer came into possession of the woodcuts belatedly, and that the unillustrated issue was first (see David R. Carlson, "The Woodcut Illustrations in Early Printed Editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales", in Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures, British Library, 2003). The text, edited by John Stowe, is based on William Thynne's translation, which was the first serious attempt at a critical edition; the majority of the works added to here to the Chaucer canon for the first time are spurious. ESTC S107207; Grolier Langland to Prior 42; Pforzheimer 176; STC 5076.