Chaucer's Canterbury Tales First Printed

1477

William Caxton printed Geoffrey Chaucer's unfinished masterpiece at his Westminster press, fixing the sprawling text of the Canterbury Tales in a typeset form that subsequent editors could argue about, scholars could annotate, and ordinary literate readers could actually purchase and own. The printing made Middle English accessible far beyond the aristocratic manuscript circles where it had circulated for eight decades and effectively canonized Chaucer as the undisputed founder of the English literary tradition.