Geoffrey Chaucer
(1343-1400)

author of the "Canterbury Tales" and poet

Died aged c. 57

Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, 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 come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament. Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage". Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts.

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Commemorated on 3 plaques

In a house over Aldgate lived Geoffrey Chaucer during 1374 (plaque not yet erected)

2 Aldgate High Street, EC3, London, United Kingdom where they lived near

Here John of Valois King of France when brought to England as a captive by the Black Prince after the Battle of Poitiers, was entertained as a prisoner of war, and died on April 8th 1364. Also in the Palace of The Savoy, Geoffrey Chaucer first great English poet, came to dine many times with John of Gaunt, and here wrote many of his poems

Savoy Court, WC2R 0ET, London, United Kingdom where they wrote many of his poems and came to dine

Geoffrey Chaucer 1342 to 1400. England's greatest medieval poet and author of the "Canterbury Tales". The Tabard Inn site from which Chaucer's Pilgrims set off in April 1386

Talbot Yard, London Bridge, SE1, London, United Kingdom where they site from which Chaucer's Pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales set off in April 1386