Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English courtier, diplomat, administrator and poet whose career connected him to the households of Edward III, Richard II and John of Gaunt. He travelled in France and Italy, held customs and royal offices and wrote works including Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. His use of Middle English helped establish a major literary tradition, although many of his works remained unfinished at his death around 1400.

Chaucer appears in Anya Seton’s Katherine and is a central or supporting figure in medieval mysteries such as Bruce Holsinger’s A Burnable Book. Peter Ackroyd’s The Clerkenwell Tales also builds fiction from Chaucer’s London and storytelling world. Novelists use his varied occupations to move between court, commerce, diplomacy and ordinary urban life, while imagining the encounters that may have inspired his pilgrims.

In Candace Robb’s A Conspiracy of Wolves, Geoffrey Chaucer, in York on a confidential mission for Prince Edward, joins the inquiry, and their separate lines of investigation converge on a conspiracy whose political consequences extend beyond the original family dispute. In Candace Robb’s A Gift of Sanctuary, he and Geoffrey Chaucer also carry a secret commission: determine whether the duke's steward at Cydweli is cooperating with Welsh rebels and betraying Lancastrian interests. Other novels featuring Geoffrey Chaucer include Candace Robb’s The Nun's Tale, Paul Doherty’s A Tapestry of Murders, Paul Doherty’s A Tournament of Murders, Paul Doherty’s Ghostly Murders, and Paul Doherty’s The Hangman’s Hymn.