96. Morris (William).- Froissart ( Sir John) Chronicles of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Scotland..., translated by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, 2 vol., William Morris’s copy with book-label “From the library of William Morris Kelmscott House Hammersmith” on front pastedowns, also bookplate of Crabbet Park library, titles lightly spotted, contemporary half calf, rubbed, rebacked preserving old gilt spines, 4to, 1812.
est. £200 – £300
William Morris planned for years to publish an edition of Froissart, which he had loved since his undergraduate days, and this was his favoured translation. Peterson quotes Morris in an interview in 1895 as saying, “You cannot have a better text than old Berners’s. It’s fine old English and would take a lot of beating. The edition of the text I am using is the two volumes quarto published by Rivington and others in 1812. My reprint is a full folio and will take up two volumes. I also intend to publish it in four parts. Those who may like a strong binding will be able to get one from me for both the Chaucer as well as the Froissart . It will be in white pigskin - a beautiful material for wearing and showing designs - and the designs will be by Cobden-Sanderson....no book that I could do would give me half the pleasure I am getting from the Froissart . I am simply revelling in it. It’s such a noble and glorious work, and every page as it leaves the press delights me more than I can say. I am taking great pains with it, and doing all I can to realise what I have long wished”. ( Ideal Book, pp.111-112, quoted in Peterson, Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press ).
Despite setting up trial pages as early as 1892 and being announced as in the press the project kept being postponed and was finally abandoned when Morris died in 1896. Some pages had been set in type so a few copies of some of these pages were printed, for distribution to Morris’s friends.
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1942, of Crabbet Park, Sussex), traveller, politician and poet. He was a friend of Morris and had an affair with his wife, Jane.