Bibliography: “Small folio. Chaucer type, with title and headings to the four books in Troy type. In black and red. Borders 33a and 33, and two illustrations designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. 160 on paper at six guineas, 6 on vellum at twenty guineas. Dated January 19, issued February 25, 1898. Published at the Kelmscott PRess. Bound in limp vellum. The two borders used in this book were almost the last that Mr. Morris designed. They were intended for an edition of The Hill of Venus, which was to have been written in prose by him and illustrated by Sir E. Burne-Jones. The foliage was suggested by the ornament in two Psalters of the last half of the thirteenth century in the library at Kelmscott House. The initial A at the beginning of the 3rd book was designed in March, 1893, for the Froissart, and does not appear elsewhere. An edition of Sigurd the Volsung, which Mr. Morris justly considered his masterpiece, was contemplated early in the history of the Kelmscott Press. An announcement appears in a proof of the first list, dated April 1892, but it was excluded from the list as issued in May. It did not reappear until the list of November 26, 1895, in which, the Chaucer being near its completion, Sigurd comes under the heading ‘in preparation,’ as a folio in Troy type, ‘with about twenty-five illustrations by Sir E. Burne-Jones.’ In the list of June 1, 1896, it is finally announced as ‘in the press,’ the number of illustrations is increased to forty, and other particulars are given. Four borders had then been designed for it, two of which were used on pages 470 & 471 of the Chaucer. The other two have not been used, though one of them has been engraved Two pages only were in type, there-two copies of which were struck off on Jan. 11, 1897, and given to friends, with the sixteen pages of Froissart mentioned above.” (56-57)
