Goeffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Produced in England, London or Westminster, not after ca. 1405
San Marino, Henry E. Huntington Library, MS EL 27 C 9
The Ellesmere Chaucer is a strikingly illustrated beautiful manuscript of Chaucer's best known work, the Canterbury Tales, and the most famous literary manuscript in English. Besides its illuminated initials with vegetal motifs, the decoration includes twenty-three marginal miniatures, picturing the pilgrims whose stories are narrated in the text.
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Open to fols. 132v–133r, depicting at right a doctor on horseback holding up a urine flask, at the beginning of the Physician’s Tale.
Detail of fol. 133r, depicting the Physician on horseback.
Image of fol. 123v, including the Prologue to the Franklin's Tale and the beginning of the Franklin's Tale.
Detail of fol. 123v, depicting the Franklin, or landowner, and the capital that begins his Tale.
Facsimile: The Canterbury Tales: The New Ellesmere Chaucer Facsimily (of Huntington Library MS EL 26 C 9) by Goeffrey Chaucer (Tokyo: Yushodo Co.; San Marino, Calif., Huntington Library Press, 1995)
Gift of Saint Louis University Library AssociatesRETURN TO LIST OF MANUSCRIPT FACSIMILES
