[4], 554 pp. With eighty-seven woodcut illustrations after Sir Edward Burne-Jones, redrawn by Robert Catterson-Smith and cut by W.H. Hooper, woodcut title-page, fourteen variously repeated woodcut borders, eighteen variously repeated woodcut frames around illustrations, twenty-six nineteen-line woodcut initial words, numerous three-line, six-line, and ten-line woodcut initial letters, and woodcut printer's device, all designed by William Morris and cut by C.E. Keates, W.H. Hooper, and W. Spielmeyer. Printed in double columns in black and red in Chaucer type, the titles of longer poems printed in Troy type. 16¾x11½, later full vellum with borders ruled in gilt, mock hinges stamped in gilt, spine lettered in gilt. One of 425 paper copies, out of a total edition of 438 copies, printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press.

Superb copy of one of the landmark press books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a marvelous example of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Kelmscott Chaucer is "not only the most important of the Kelmscott Press's productions; it is also one of the great books of the world. Its splendor..can hardly be matched among the books of the time" (Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England). This is the John Whiting Friel copy, with his bookplate on the front pastedown. The Artist & the Book 45; Clark Library, Kelmscott and Doves, pp.46-48; Peterson A40; Ransom, Private Presses, p.329, no. 40; Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England, 258; Sparling 40; Tomkinson, p.117, no. 40.