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."
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SoundBites
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"[The Chaucer] project follows the library's successful digitization
of its two copies of the Gutenberg Bible, a site which received one million
hits in its first six months."
Kristian Jensen, head of Western European
Printed Collections at the British Library.
 Read
DCLnews' coverage of the Gutenberg Bible digitization project at:
http://www.dclab.com/digital_gutenberg.asp
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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.
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Did
You Know?
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The first edition of The Canterbury Tales is extremely rare and a copy in
1998 sold for £4,621.500 ($7.8m), the highest price ever paid for a printed
book. The British Library holds two copies, the first of which is part of the
collection of King George III, which came to the nation in 1828.
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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
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
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