In October 1974, I switched from being a reader of books to becoming a collector of books. The big event was going to an auction in Kingston, New Brunswick, where Glenda and I, both being voracious readers, bought two boxes of books from the estate of Caroline Delancey Torrie, of Fredericton. When we got home, we took the books out of the boxes and discovered books in multiple languages, books from the eighteenth century and a two volume, limited edition set of Boccaccio’s Decameron, 1949, illustrated and signed by Rockwell Kent. This was my first introduction to this gifted illustrator. The week following the auction, I went to a bookstore and found a copy of John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors. And I started down that collectors path. Carter and his books were at the pinnacle of knowledge on books. This book is still in print, if you don’t have one – get one.
A couple of months ago, I was fortunate to find Rockwell Kent’s The Canterbury Tales of
Geoffrey Chaucer, the subject of this week’s musing.
The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer; together with a version in modern English verse by William Van Wyck; illustrated by Rockwell Kent; two volumes; published in New York by Covici-Friede, MCMXXX. #629 of 924 copies, signed by Rockwell Kent.
This is a folio-sized edition with pages measuring 370mm X 248mm. A very high-end produced set, bound in tan buckram.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known
for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey.
Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A
Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in public
service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament, having been elected
as shire knight for Kent.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The
Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and Parlement of Foules. He is seen as crucial
in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in
England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas
Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of
finding poetic matter in English). Almost two thousand English words are first attested in
Chaucerian manuscripts.
Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) was an American painter, printmaker, illustrator, writer, sailor,
adventurer and voyager.
When Kent died of a heart attack in 1971, the New York Times published an extensive front- page obituary that commenced: "At various (and frequently simultaneous) periods of his long life the protean Rockwell Kent was an architect, painter, illustrator, lithographer, xylographer, cartoonist, advertising artist, carpenter, dairy farmer, explorer, trade union leader and political controversialist. "He is so multiple a person as to be multifarious," Louis Untermeyer, the poet, once observed. When an anthology of Kent's work was published in 1982, a reviewer of the book for the New York Times further described Kent as "... a thoughtful, troublesome, profoundly independent, odd and kind man who made an imperishable contribution to the art of bookmaking in the United States."
That is quite a listing of illustrations!
Now to look at four of his figures.
