Canterbury Tales

This edition of the Canterbury Tales, complete and unabridged, was specially prepared for Everyman’s Library by Professor A. C. Cawley.

Since its first publication in 1958 it has been acclaimed by critics throughout the English-speaking world, and has become a standard textbook among students everywhere. The text is not modernised; it is based partly on that of the Ellesmere manuscript, an early fifteenth-century copy of all the ten separate fragments in which Chaucer left the Tales at his death in 1400.

This beautifully decorated volume, now in the Huntington Library, California, is the work of the very best professional copyists of the immediate pre-printing era, and is therefore of the highest textual authority. Professor Cawley provides marginal glosses and footnotes, which enable readers unfamiliar with Middle English to understand even the most difficult passages without having to turn the page in search of explanatory material.