The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.

Chaucer wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386). (His family name derives from the French chausseur meaning "shoemaker". The official Chaucer of the early printed volumes of his Works was construed as a proto-Protestant as the same was done concurrently with William Langland and Piers Plowman.

Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin. Among his many works which include The Book of the Duchess the House of Fame the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. 1343 – 25 October 1400) known as the Father of English literature is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.