Tales from Chaucer

Libraries are always 'weeding' books, by which we mean getting rid of things that are too worn, or old, or unused, or in which the information is no longer correct. This is distressing in principle to some people, who see libraries as eternal housing for all things ancient. But a library only has so much space, and has to keep making space for what's new -- so out goes the old. We like to recited the mantra that everything old is not a treasure. Some old books are just old books.
But sometimes you come across something that is just too priceless to discard, and often it has more to do with the book as an object, as an artifact, than as a work of literature. I came across one such today. This is a book from 1959 called Tales from Chaucer. The author, Eleanor Farjeon, sought to render many of the stories from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in modern English, so modern readers could enjoy them. It has been a long time since anybody read it, and who knows how many people read it back then? We have a few other books that are complete renderings of Chaucer's most famous work in modern English, so do we need this one?
As I said, the author is Eleanor Farjeon, but it is illustrated by Marjorie Walters. Each chapter heading has a black and white woodcut showing the character the tale is named for -- the Knight, the Parson, the Nun, et cetera. Throughout there are color tinted plates of notable scenes from the stories. The plates are on thick paper stock, and in remarkable shape despite being nearly fifty years old. I could never bear to take this book out of the collection. Not only is it a beautiful work in itself, but it also harks back to a time not so long ago when books and reading were one of the most brilliant and colorful mediums of entertainment. I still think they are, and I am thankful that there are so many library users who agree. But a book like this still stirs something in my memory that I think we will never recover.