Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) was an English poet who spent his working life as a courtier and civil servant: page in a royal household, diplomat to Italy, controller of customs in the port of London, clerk of the king's works. In the hours left over he wrote The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde and, in his last fifteen years, The Canterbury Tales, which he left unfinished. He wrote in English when the court still read French, and his contemporaries already called him the father of English poetry. He was the first poet buried in what became Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.