William Caxton’s Edition of John Gower Confessio Amantis
Rare Book Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Incunabula 532.5

UNC-CH Catalogue Entry:

• Published:  Westminster, William Caxton, 2 Sept. 1493 [i.e. 1483]
• Description: [9], 2-ccxi [i.e. ccxiii], [1] l.; leaves [1], [8], [9] and last leaf are blank. fo. 30 cm.
• Notes:
  • Capital spaces, guide-letters.
  • Gift of the Hanes Foundation, 1960.
  • Part of the Incunabula.
  • RBC Incunabula 532.5 supervised
  • c.1: Lacks leaves I (blank), vii, viii (blank), p. 2, 8, q 1, r 7, 8, s 1-3, 6, B 1, 8, C 1-6. u 8 misbound after t 6.
  • A number of leaves damaged at margins (repaired). Printing nearly intact. A few ms. notes. "Ih. Crofton" on ii r°. Capitals supplied by hand in red. In blind-stamped calf over wooden boards.
  • Cited in: Hain. Repertorium (with Copinger's Supplement) 7835. Duff. 15th cent. Engl. books, 166. Ricci. Census of Caxtons, 48; 18. Goff G-329.

Overview

William Caxton (c. 1422 – c. 1491), widely considered the first printer in England, chose the Confessio Amantis to be one of the select volumes he was to publish. His Confessio edition was the first large volume he was to set in a two-column format (Driver 270), and represents a rare instance of Caxton integrating a table of contents for a literary work (Blake 283-284).

UNC-CH RBC Incunabula 532.5 is remarkable in a number of ways. It was gifted to UNC-CH in 1960 to serve as the one millionth volume of the UNC-CH Library. This copy contains the first printed leaf of the volume, which is missing in many other copies, and a number of marginal notes and drawings of some interest. This volume also retains the original Caxton binding “of the craftsman known as the first Caxton binder,” which is extant in only a handful of Caxton editions (Wells 10). During restoration of the volume, one of the pieces of reinforcement paper inside its cover was found to be a 1481 indulgence (collecting funds for a war against the Turks) also printed by Caxton (Wells 16).

Bibliography

• Blake, N. F. “Caxton, William (1415x24–1492).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. David Cannadine. Jan. 2008. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4963>.
• Blake, N. F. "Caxton’s Copytext of Gower’s Confessio Amantis." Anglia 85 (1967): 282-293.
• Blake, N. F. “Early Printed Editions of Confessio Amantis.” Mediaevalia 16 (1993): 289-306.
• Driver, Martha W. “Printing the Confessio Amantis: Caxton's Edition in Context.” In Re-visioning Gower, edited by R.F.Yeager. Asheville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998. 269-303.
• Echard, Siân. “Gower in Print.” In A Companion to Gower, edited by Siân Echard. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004. 115-35.
• Peck, Russel, ed. Confessio Amantis. Latin trans. Andrew Galloway. 2nd ed.. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000-2013. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams.
  • Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3
• Wells, William. “Gower and Caxton.” South Atlantic Bulletin 27.1 (1961): 9-10.
• Wells, William. “The One Millionth Volume: The Poet and the Poem; the Printer and the Book.” Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Library. https://archive.org/details/onemillionthvolu0well

Online Images

• Images are organized by Book. Images for Book 6 and Book 7 are combined, since the misbinding affects the order within these books.
• Images are titled by their folio number within the volume.
• All images are presented as originally photographed in order to preserve resolution of the image as much as possible. Scaling of the image size will allow for increased or decreased resolution
• Line numbers referenced are fom Peck's edition.

Table of Contents	(000v-001r) - (005v-006r)
Prologue	(006v-007r) - (013v-014r)
Book 1	(014v-015r) - (034v-035r)
Book 2	(035v-036r) - (054v-055r)
Book 3	(055v-056r) - (071v-072r)
Book 4	(072v-073r) - (095v-096r)
Book 5	(096v-097r) - (134v-135r)
Book 6	(135v-136r) - (148v-149r) Contains misbinding. See notes on misbinding. 135v-136r: 135v ends with line 7080 of Book 5; 136r begins with line 58 of Book 6. 145v-146r: 145v ends with line 1931 of Book 6; 146r begins with line 902 of Book 7 146v-147r: 146v ends with line 1041 of Book 7; 147r begins with line 1932 of Book 6
Book 7	(149v-150r) - (186v-187r) 155v-156r: 155v ends with line 901of Book 7; 156r begins with line 1042 of Book 7
Book 8	191r: header mislabeled as Liber Septimus (Book 7)
Cover
Details
000v-001r	005v-006r 006r: Notation: “John a kynaston wrote this to you sweet hart & cossen ywis.”	010v-011r	010v-011r
042v-043r Poem	062v-063r	062v-063r	067v-068r
075v-076r	085v-086r	088v-089r	091v-092r
103v-104r	103v-104r	109v-110r	109v-110r
110v-111r	121v-122r	121v-122r	122v-123r
154v-155r	182v-183r Spanish marginalia	182v-183r	182v-183r
182v-183r	200v-201r-d1 "This ys my boke . . ."	200v-201r
Binding filler removed during restoration with figures	Binding filler Closeup of drawn figure	Binding filler Closeup of partially cutout figure
1481 Indulgence	1481 Indulgence

Acknowledgement

I am extremely grateful to the Rare Book Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill, for permission to host these images, and for their support and assistance in allowing me access to the volume to take take these images. - Brian W. Gastle, Western Carolina University