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Chaucer makes pilgrimage into cyberspace

The first edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - worth $7.8m - has been turned into an e-book by the British Library and made available to all for free. DCLnews reports.

WHEN GEOFFREY CHAUCER first put pen to parchment to compose the "Canterbury Tales" in the 15th century, the English poet could not have imagined the book would become and remain a bestseller for 600 years. Nor could he have dreamt that a copy of the first edition would sell for $7.8m (the highest sum ever paid for a printed book). Or that the earliest editions would be transformed into an electronic book by the British Library and be made available to all over the Internet for free.

But all this has happened. If you're a fan of his tales, which range from the romantic to the bawdy, you can now examine the skill and craft of the very earliest editions - published by William Caxton in the 1470s and 1480s - without leaving your home. Visit the British Library's website and you can either look at each edition individually or compare them. Or, if you're interested in early illustration, you can view the delightful woodcuts depicting Chaucer's pilgrims in the second edition (see picture above). You can also read a transcription of the full text of both editions.

"We are committed to making our collections accessible to as many people as possible. The Canterbury Tales is one of the iconic texts of English literature. With these digital copies users can explore these early editions in their entirety and study not only the text but the development of printing techniques and illustration," says Kristian Jensen, Head of Early Printed Books at the British Library. "This is the beauty of digitization, to take something of great intellectual value, which is rare and fragile, and make it available to anyone and everyone."

Commenting on importance of the British Library project, Mark Gross, president of DCL, said: "Far from being conservative backwaters, libraries are often at the forefront of technology with some very challenging projects - especially in making accessible the vary rarest works that they can't let people touch."

A team from Keio University in Japan used digital photography to produce a total of 1,300 high-resolution images of the texts. The quality and resolution makes it possible to conduct detailed typographical analyses of the two editions of the Canterbury Tales. The text itself was transcribed by staff working on The Canterbury Tales Project at De Montfort University in Leicester, England.

The Canterbury Tales is made up of 24 stories written in Middle English, told by pilgrims journeying from London to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket in Canterbury.

Like most people, you'll probably remember the Canterbury Tales from high school and college. But fresh interest has been generated in them after the BBC ran a controversial adaptation of the Tales for modern times. The series attracted seven million viewers in Britain and will be syndicated around the world soon.

Adrian Arthur, Head of Web Services Delivery at the British Library, who oversaw the project to bring the two early editions of Chaucer to the web, says: "With the Caxton's Chaucer site the Library is bringing these great treasures alive in a new way for both the browser and the professional researcher. People new to the works can brush up on their knowledge of Caxton and Chaucer, then go on to explore the background. Experts in the field can go straight to the texts themselves, and will also find valuable information on their provenance and presence in the British Library".

The digital version of The Canterbury Tales represents the kind of breakthrough in communications technology that is echoed by the development of the Internet. It's also a sign that, despite media doom and gloom about e-books, a real revolution is happening. We've seen it in the realm of technical manuals, educational textbooks, and reference books. But now, at last, it's happening in the bestseller market, only the bestseller in question is 600 years old.

DCLnews editorial
11/3/2003 

FURTHER INFORMATION

Caxton's Chaucer at the British Library
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/caxton/homepage.html

COVERAGE FROM DCLNEWS OF RARE BOOKS ONLINE

Lindisfarne Gospels illuminated manuscript preserved online
http://www.dclab.com/lindisfarne_gospels.asp

XML revives rare botanical books at New York Botanical Garden
http://www.dclab.com/nybg_digitization_project.asp

Rare record of vanishing Native American people preserved digitally
http://www.dclab.com/mckenney.asp