CHAUCER (Geoffrey), KING (Ronald), EDITIONS ALECTO & [CIRCLE PRESS]

The Prologue from the Canterbury Tales, text based mainly on the Ellesmere MS.

RON KING'S FIRST BOOK

14 full page screen prints by Ron King, each signed and titled, and title page device. One of 125 copies, with an additional 15 artists proofs, signed by Ron King and numbered on the limitation page. Folio, 37 x 53.5cm, [4], 58pp., plus errata leaf, formed of 15 bifolia with screen print on first recto, the verso of which is blank apart from a printed number, then followed by two pages of text on final recto and verso. Unbound loose sheets, paper wrappers, within publisher’s blue cloth portfolio, with oatmeal cloth slipcase. London, Editions Alecto, 1967.

£750.00

Very good, slipcase slightly soiled, spine of portfolio badly faded, some bifolia with pinpricks in corners for registration during printing and p.54 with an unusual paper flaw midway on the page, but all prints bright and clean.

Ron King’s first book, commissioned by the pioneering print publishers Editions Alecto, although in reality becoming the first publication of Ron King’s Circle Press after Alecto ran into difficulties and abandoned the project, despite the printing having already been completed. King followed well established fine press tradition in taking Chaucer as his text, but his screen prints, using torn and cut paper stencils with designs inspired by medieval heraldry to create busts of each pilgrim, printed in contrasting colours and metallic inks, are anything but traditional. ‘Enriched with muted silver, the most exquisite examples, like the Knight, encapsulate sword, armour, stained fustian, foreign honour, and worthiness in a motif as ingeniously complex as it is explicit’.

Stock No.
233602