I was looking for a book with Chaucer's actual writing. All I got was a reference book, no stories at all.

This is some great writing; poetic and beautiful in every way...assuming you can read middle english...big assumption, but if you have any kind of quick translation device -- cliff's notes will do -- i recommend it

What can I say. It's Chaucer. It's in Middle English. I got credit for it and I loved it.

As a work of art, this edition highlights the beautiful engravings of yesteryears. As a readable text, especially if an academic sort, there is little of practical value here.

There are four significant points about my nearly year long effort to read this amazing work.

First of all, there is the book itself. An oversized hardback at well over five hundred pages, it probably weighs around twenty pounds. This is not a book to be read sitting in a chair or lying horizontally in bed. Instead, one has to sit at a coffee table and lean over. It was simply too heavy to hold in one’s hands. But is it beautifully done: glossy pages, with double columned print and many woodcut engravings by Burne-Jones make it the type of book one smooths one’s hand over each successive page.

Then there is the Middle English language. Although I took an entire course in Chaucer while at university, that was almost fifty years ago, and as I now recall, a lot of my reading was in translated or dual-language texts. Morris’ publication is all in the original Middle English which, for the majority of the time, was somewhat understandable but took a real effort of concentration. Thus, each day I only read but two full pages, with their four columns of print. The whole book took the better part of a year to complete. The helpful glossary at the beginning of the book was consulted each and every day, usually on multiple occasions, and more than twenty pages of notes were made both of words for which translations were provided, and for those which were not. It was the middle level of understanding this language impediment precluded: I could often get the meaning of each particular line of verse, and usually had the overall sense of the story in general, but the general flow of the arc in the narrative I felt was often falling beyond the reach of my comprehension.

Then there is the writer. The dominant adjective I came to feel about this curious figure from the Middle Ages was unpredictable. Taking The Canterbury Tales as a microcosm of his entire body of work, it is so varied and inconsistent as to almost defy description. On one hand, there is the broad humour of the Miller’s Tale but then there is also the pedantic goings on and on of the Parson’s Tale. The bawdiness of the Wife of Bath is as irreverent as the prim code of honour espoused in the ever so proper Knight’s Tale. This disparity applies to his other works. The Treatise on the Astrolabe is a scholarly work on engineering while the translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy tries to reconcile the seeming opposites of human free will and divine foreknowledge. Then, the story of Troilus and Cressida is a sad, romantic tale of love gone wrong through the weakness of a woman, while the Parliament of Fowls and the Legend of Good Women retell classical stories of women done wrong by the male objects of their affection. It would seem that Chaucer could do many different things, and most of them very well, but never really settled down to one particular type of writing.

Indeed, this lack of focus and concentration resulted in at least four of his major works: The Canterbury Tales, the translation of The Romance of the Rose, the Parliament and the Legend all being incomplete. I get the feeling of a man with little sense of self discipline, an inordinate degree of talent: a pre-Renaissance type of renaissance man fascination with a variety of different aspects of the human experience and quite possibly, very poor time management and organizational skills. Still, one cannot help but be continually fascinated by such a cornucopia of literary offerings.

Also, Chaucer is the main writer responsible for the development of English rather than French or Latin as the language of the literature of his country. At the end of his Troilus, he sends off the work with the claim:

And for ther is so great diversitee
In English and in writing of our tonge
So preye I God that noon miswryte thee,
Ne thee mismetre for defaute of tonge.
And red wherso thou be, or elles songe
That thou be understonde I God beseche.

This book is not the easiest to read, but for any true bibliophile, it is a treasure to own. Given the first copy off his press just days before his death, William Morris – who like Chaucer delighted in a wide variety of different types of activities and writings - must have felt an overwhelmingly justified sense of pride in his accomplishment.

Marvelously put together. As a lover of both the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde I was expecting to be happy with the book, however his Good Wives blew me away. Written at a very misogynistic time, but it was a powerfully strong defense of femininity, which would not have pleased the Church of the day. The wealth of poetry and tales he wrote far exceeds just the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, for any lover of Chaucer's work this is a must have for the personal library shelf.

Ahh. The things we remember. The things we forget. It is a shame that so many people have Chaucer forced upon them at too young an age in an academic setting so that it is very hard to appreciate how much fun he is and how much he still has to say to us today. I think I first "received" a few of the Canterbury Tales in English class in high school in this manner. Then I read a few more in an Intro Brit Lit (pre-1900) class in college. Finally, an entire semester of Chaucer with a Danish professor in the English program during a semester abroad at the University of Aarhus in Denmark in the spring of 1979, which I had completely forgotten about until just now. I can still see the book with its grey cover and red letters, huge – probably 700 pages - which became rather worn from being hauled around to class all semester through snow and wind and rain. I don't remember the professor's name, but I remember that in his quiet, European, sitting-around-the-seminar-table-for-a-little-chat way, he made reading Chaucer as lively and funny and charming and salacious as the Wife of Bath herself. Maybe this is the way that Chaucer needs to be experienced. The only thing that would've made it more appropriate would've been sitting in a pub with a glass of beer in hand.

This was fun to read, I will have to admit that I guessed a lot (in regards to the Middle English) - but the more you read the more you fall into the cadence of his words....

When I out at the dores cam,
I faste aboute me beheld.
Then sawgh I but a large feld,
As fer as that I myghte see,
Withouten toun, or hous, or tree,
Or bush, or grass, or eryd lond;
For al the feld nas but of sond
As smal as man may se yet lye

Chaucer, Geoffrey (2009-11-05). The Complete Works of Chaucer In Middle English [Illustrated] (Kindle Locations 21923-21927). A1. Kindle Edition.

Chaucer: the Godfather. Really.

The Kelmscott Chaucer is indeed a beautiful volume, put together with much patience and beauty. The illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones are nice. They are not quite my preference -- not as nice as the Walter Crane illustrations for The Faerie Queene, in my opinion. But it is a beautiful tribute to Chaucer and valued edition that raises Chaucers work of art to an object of art.

It is, though, not a reading edition. In addition to it’s awkward size and weight, it does not include any assistance for the reader. You can see my thoughts on Chaucer here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I honestly admit I've never read the whole book from cover to cover, as the language is just too hard for that. But although the bits I've read over the years took up a lot of my spare time, they make marvellous reading material and I still occasionally pick up this book to read in it a bit.

We already own Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales, so I don't think we need to get the complete works, really.