Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London around 1342 or 1343 and died there in October 1400. Poetry was not his day job. He served as courtier, diplomat and civil servant under three kings, went on missions to Flanders, France and Italy in the 1370s, and later looked after royal buildings as clerk of the king's works. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, an unusual honour for a commoner, and is regarded as the first poet interred in what became Poets' Corner.

He wrote in Middle English and worked across several forms. Besides the Tales, Britannica names The Parlement of Foules and the love story Troilus and Criseyde among his major works. What stays with readers is the mix: comic, shrewd, sometimes tender, and always watching the people around him.

The Canterbury Tales, written between about 1387 and his death, begins at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. Around thirty pilgrims agree to a storytelling contest on the road to Becket's shrine, with the innkeeper Harry Bailly as judge. The General Prologue sketches each traveller in a few lines. Chaucer never finished the plan: there is no journey home, and some pilgrims never get to speak. William Caxton printed the work around 1476.

Start with the Tales, the only Chaucer title currently listed here. The Penguin Classics edition prepared by Jill Mann, a scholar of medieval literature, keeps the original Middle English spelling and adds her introduction and notes. It is not a modern-English translation, so give yourself a few pages to find the rhythm. Read the General Prologue first, then the Knight's Tale, and let the shorter, rowdier tales come after.