Yesterday,
I posted about the world’s most expensive books. In the top-ten list is the 1477 first edition
of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Printed by William Caxton, it was the first
major volume printed in England (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10475282/The-worlds-most-expensive-books.html?frame=2746579).
It is the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer published by
William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in 1896 which the Irish poet William Butler
Yeats called the “most beautiful of all printed books.” Apparently, Morris, a major figure in the
arts and crafts movement, spent four years designing what he believed to be the
ideal book. This edition made the news
recently when it was announced that the University of British Columbia Library
purchased a copy for $202,000 (US).
Read the
full media release at http://news.ubc.ca/2016/08/24/the-most-beautiful-of-all-printed-books-ubc-library-acquires-copy-of-the-kelmscott-chaucer/
and check out the 22 photos of the beautiful volume (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ubcpublicaffairs/sets/72157672871371505).
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