/lit/ - Literature

>>14011314
He was "half-a-dozen giants," to be sure. I just had to do my doctorate on him. He was at various times an architect, furniture maker, wallpaper and interior designer, an artist, a writer of poetry, prose, politics and art theory, a leading socialist, co-founder of the second manifestation of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement and of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, a calligrapher and painter, a translator, dyer, glazier, tile-maker, weaver, embroiderer, rug and tapestry-maker, an illuminator and, finally, the printer who began the private press movement in England. And he died at 62. His poetry was good enough that he was approached to be England's Poet Laureate after Tennyson died, his late novels important enough that they inspired Lewis and Tolkien to virtually invent modern epic fantasy, his printed Chaucer hailed as the most beautiful book made in England in five centuries. It's just terrifying.

>>13447572
"Really old" (40s). Morris was the subject of my doctorate, though, which is why I ended up with so many books connected to him.

>>11105772
Not that much, but they are rare. I have a couple of pages from other Kelmscott books.

>>11089017
Pages from antique books, 16th-19th century. My library's coffee table has a display space.

>>10832120
From your description, I'm also guessing you're not speaking of Old English at all,

Mære þeoden,
æþeling ærgod, unbliðe sæt,
þolode ðryðswyð, þegnsorge dreah,
syðþan hie þæs laðan last sceawedon,
wergan gastes

or even Middle English,

Forþi an aunter in erde I attle to schawe,
Þat a selly in siȝt summe men hit holden,

but rather plain old Elizabethan/Shakespearean English. That's easy. Read more, expand your vocabulary, check glosses and notes, and read out loud.

>>10690343
I just realized how shitty that photo is. Here's the Kelmscott page:

>>9931260
That's the reading table in the upper library. It has a pull-out glass shelf I can put documents in (or anything else I want to display under glass). I needed a sizeable table for some large books, and this Ikea find added extra options. It has some 19th-century private press pages (Doves & Kelmscott), and some older hymnal and engraving pages.

A page from Kelmscott Press's Golden Legend.

William Morris: A trial page from Kelmscott's edition of Caxton's Golden Legend, 1892.