Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

•          Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

• This is the very popular school edition.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, writer and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the ‘father of English literature’, or alternatively, the ‘father of English poetry’. He was the first writer to be buried in what has since become Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his ten-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in public service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat and member of the Parliament of England, having been elected shire knight for Kent.

Amongst his other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and Parlement of Foules. A prolific writer, Chaucer has been seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. His contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as “the firste fyndere of our fair langage” (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English).[ Almost two thousand English words are first attested in Chaucerian manuscripts.

The Reverend Richard Morris (1833–1894) was a prominent English philologist and Anglican priest. He is best remembered for his highly influential 19th-century editions of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, which helped establish the academic study of Middle English.

Key Works & Contributions

• The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1866): Morris published this celebrated collection, which later served as the basis for the multi-volume Aldine Edition of the British Poets.

• The Prologue, the Knightes Tale, and the Nonne Preestes Tale (1867): Printed by Oxford University’s Clarendon Press, this school edition became a staple in literary studies and remained in print for decades. [

• Chaucer Society Translations: He contributed editions of Chaucer’s work to the Chaucer Society, including an Old English rendering of Boethius (Boece).

• Philological Impact: Alongside his Chaucer editions, Morris was a foundational figure in the Early English Text Society. His meticulous work provided readers with the first accurate glossaries and grammar guides to properly understand Chaucher