On Wednesday 12 October 1960, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill celebrated the 167th anniversary of its foundation with “pomp and splendor,” capped by an address from Nathan Pusey, then-president of Harvard University. A special gift to the university library, to serve as its one-millionth acquisition, also marked the occasion: William Caxton’s 1483 edition of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (UNC-CH Incunabula 532.5). The volume was donated to the library by the Hanes Foundation, a private philanthropic organization devoted to supporting education, arts, and sciences in North Carolina. But this symbolic moment was only the latest in the history of this particular copy of Caxton’s edition of the poem. While much of the history of this volume has been lost in the five centuries since its printing, there are tantalizing witnesses to and hints of its readers and users since it emerged from Caxton’s print shop in Westminster. The binding of this particular copy – one of only a handful of extant copies by Caxton’s original binder – included a papal indulgence consigned by a contemporary of Caxton’s with literary ties. And there are several marginal notations from later readers and users, including the opening lines of a popular sixteenth-century lyric, a number of signatures both partial and complete, and a Spanish notation that potentially situates the volume (and Gower’s poem) in a wider conversation about Gower’s Iberian connections and literary afterlife. The UNC-CH copy of Caxton’s edition of Gower’s Confessio Amantis illuminates the relationship between the printer and the poem, as well as the ways in which later users of the volume profited from the peculiar material and symbolic prestige that the volume (and its associated author and printer) represents.

England – Westminster

Shortly after establishing himself at Westminster in 1476, Caxton, in his Book of Curtesye (1477), echoed Chaucer’s assessment of Gower by referring to Gower’s “writing morale” and encouraged reading Gower since he is “full of sentence and langage.” It would be six more years, however, before Caxton published his edition of the Confessio, the work to which his prior encomium referred. By 1483, the publication date of his edition of the Confessio Amantis, Caxton had already published a number of works at Westminster, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1478) and his translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (1478), The Chronicles of England (1480), Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polycronicon (1482), and a number of Lydgate’s works.