The Ellesmere Chaucer, or Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, is an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, owned by the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California. It is considered one of the most significant copies of the Tales.
Ellesmere Manuscript in Huntington Library
The beginning of The Knight's Tale from the Ellesmere Manuscript
The opening page of The Wife of Bath's Tale from the Ellesmere Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, circa 1405-1410.
Geoffrey Chaucer from the Ellesmere Manuscript
Geoffrey Chaucer 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.
Manuscript portrait, 1412
Chaucer as a pilgrim, in the early 15th-century illuminated Ellesmere manuscript of the Canterbury Tales
A 19th-century depiction of Chaucer
Blue plaque at the site of the Tabard inn in Southwark, London where in 1386 the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales set off to visit Canterbury Cathedral
