Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was born around 1343, the son of a London wine merchant, and made his career in the service of the court: page, soldier in France, where he was taken prisoner, envoy to Italy, where he discovered the works of Boccaccio and Petrarch, controller of customs for the port of London from 1374, then clerk of the king's works. He wrote in the English of London, at a time when Latin remained the language of learning and French that of the upper classes. He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, and it was near his tomb that, two centuries later, poets began to be buried.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryThe Canterbury TalesGeoffrey Chaucer · 1400LiteraturePublic domain