Geoffrey Chaucer
Portrait of Chaucer from the 17th century.
Born	c. 1343 London, England
Died	25 October 1400(1400-10-25) (aged 56-57)
Resting place	Westminster Abbey, London
Occupation	Author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, diplomat
Language	Middle English
Influences Dante Alighieri, Ovid, Giovanni Boccaccio
Influenced Nearly All English Literature, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Miles Coverdale

Geoffrey Chaucer ( /ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 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. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. 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. 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.

Life[link]

Chaucer as a pilgrim from the Ellesmere manuscript

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. (His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".^[1]) In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure—bourgeois, if not elite.^[2] John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated April 3, 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie' .

While records concerning the lives of his contemporary poets, William Langland and the Pearl Poet are practically non-existent, since Chaucer was a public servant, his official life is very well documented, with nearly five hundred written items testifying to his career. The first of the "Chaucer Life Records" appears in 1357, in the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster, when he became the noblewoman's page through his father's connections.^[3] She was married to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of the king, Edward III, and the position brought the teenage Chaucer into the close court circle, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king, collecting and inventorying scrap metal.

In 1359, in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeth's husband, as part of the English army. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims. Edward paid £16 for his ransom,^[4] a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released.

After this, Chaucer's life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain, and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps even going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward III's queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford, who later (ca. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt. It is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had an illustrious career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France, and Speaker of the House of Commons. Thomas's daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk. Thomas's great-grandson (Geoffrey's great-great-grandson), John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed. Geoffrey's other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey.^[5][6] Agnes, an attendant at Henry IV's coronation; and another son, Lewis Chaucer.

Chaucer probably studied law in the Inner Temple (an Inn of Court) at this time. He became a member of the royal court of Edward III as a varlet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for court employment. He travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, in Milan. Two other literary stars of the era were in attendance: Jean Froissart and Petrarch. Around this time, Chaucer is believed to have written The Book of the Duchess in honour of Blanche of Lancaster, the late wife of John of Gaunt, who died in 1369.

Chaucer travelled to Picardy the next year as part of a military expedition, and visited Genoa and Florence in 1373. Numerous scholars such as Skeat, Boitani, and Rowland^[7] suggested that, on this Italian trip, he came into contact with Petrarch or Boccaccio. They introduced him to medieval Italian poetry, the forms and stories of which he would use later.^[8] The purposes of a voyage in 1377 are mysterious, as details within the historical record conflict. Later documents suggest it was a mission, along with Jean Froissart, to arrange a marriage between the future King Richard II and a French princess, thereby ending the Hundred Years War. If this was the purpose of their trip, they seem to have been unsuccessful, as no wedding occurred.

In 1378, Richard II sent Chaucer as an envoy (secret dispatch) to the Visconti and to Sir John Hawkwood, English condottiere (mercenary leader) in Milan. It has been speculated that it was Hawkwood on whom Chaucer based his character the Knight in the Canterbury Tales, for a description matches that of a fourteenth-century condottiere.

A 19th century depiction of Chaucer

A possible indication that his career as a writer was appreciated came when Edward III granted Chaucer "a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life" for some unspecified task. This was an unusual grant, but given on a day of celebration, St George's Day, 1374, when artistic endeavours were traditionally rewarded, it is assumed to have been another early poetic work. It is not known which, if any, of Chaucer's extant works prompted the reward, but the suggestion of him as poet to a king places him as a precursor to later poets laureate. Chaucer continued to collect the liquid stipend until Richard II came to power, after which it was converted to a monetary grant on 18 April 1378.

Chaucer obtained the very substantial job of Comptroller of the Customs for the port of London, which he began on 8 June 1374.^[9] He must have been suited for the role as he continued in it for twelve years, a long time in such a post at that time. His life goes undocumented for much of the next ten years, but it is believed that he wrote (or began) most of his famous works during this period. He was mentioned in law papers of 4 May 1380, involved in the raptus of Cecilia Chaumpaigne. What raptus means is unclear, but the incident seems to have been resolved quickly and did not leave a stain on Chaucer's reputation. It is not known if Chaucer was in the city of London at the time of the Peasants' Revolt, but if he was, he would have seen its leaders pass almost directly under his apartment window at Aldgate.^[10]

While still working as comptroller, Chaucer appears to have moved to Kent, being appointed as one of the commissioners of peace for Kent, at a time when French invasion was a possibility. He is thought to have started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. He also became a Member of Parliament for Kent in 1386. There is no further reference after this date to Philippa, Chaucer's wife, and she is presumed to have died in 1387. He survived the political upheavals caused by the Lords Appellants, despite the fact that Chaucer knew some of the men executed over the affair quite well.

On 12 July 1389, Chaucer was appointed the clerk of the king's works, a sort of foreman organising most of the king's building projects.^[11] No major works were begun during his tenure, but he did conduct repairs on Westminster Palace, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, continue building the wharf at the Tower of London, and build the stands for a tournament held in 1390. It may have been a difficult job, but it paid well: two shillings a day, more than three times his salary as a comptroller. Chaucer was also appointed keeper of the lodge at the King’s park in Feckenham, which was a largely honorary appointment.^[12]

In September 1390, records say that he was robbed, and possibly injured, while conducting the business, and it was shortly after, on 17 June 1391, that he stopped working in this capacity. Almost immediately, on 22 June, he began as Deputy Forester in the royal forest of North Petherton, Somerset. This was no sinecure, with maintenance an important part of the job, although there were many opportunities to derive profit. He was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by Richard II in 1394.^[13] It is believed that Chaucer stopped work on the Canterbury Tales sometime towards the end of this decade.

Not long after the overthrow of his patron, Richard II, in 1399, Chaucer's name fades from the historical record. The last few records of his life show his pension renewed by the new king, and his taking of a lease on a residence within the close of Westminster Abbey on 24 December 1399.^[14] Although Henry IV renewed the grants assigned to Chaucer by Richard, Chaucer's own The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse hints that the grants might not have been paid. The last mention of Chaucer is on 5 June 1400, when some monies owed to him were paid.

He is believed to have died of unknown causes on 25 October 1400, but there is no firm evidence for this date, as it comes from the engraving on his tomb, erected more than one hundred years after his death. There is some speculation—most recently in Terry Jones' book Who Murdered Chaucer? : A Medieval Mystery—that he was murdered by enemies of Richard II or even on the orders of his successor Henry IV, but the case is entirely circumstantial. Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, as was his right owing to his status as a tenant of the Abbey's close. In 1556, his remains were transferred to a more ornate tomb, making Chaucer the first writer interred in the area now known as Poets' Corner.

Works[link]

Chaucer's first major work, The Book of the Duchess, was an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster (who died in 1369). It is possible that this work was commissioned by her husband John of Gaunt, as he granted Chaucer a £10 annuity on 13 June 1374. This would seem to place the writing of The Book of the Duchess between the years 1369 and 1374. Two other early works by Chaucer were Anelida and Arcite and The House of Fame. 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 Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde all date from this time. Also it is believed that he started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. Chaucer is best known as the writer of The Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of stories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury; these tales would help to shape English literature.

The Canterbury Tales contrasts with other literature of the period in the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell and the varied characters who are engaged in the pilgrimage. Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, perhaps as a result of the incomplete state of the work. Chaucer drew on real life for his cast of pilgrims: the innkeeper shares the name of a contemporary keeper of an inn in Southwark, and real-life identities for the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Man of Law and the Student have been suggested. The many jobs that Chaucer held in medieval society—page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator—probably exposed him to many of the types of people he depicted in the Tales. He was able to shape their speech and satirise their manners in what was to become popular literature among people of the same types.

Chaucer's works are sometimes grouped into first a French period, then an Italian period and finally an English period, with Chaucer being influenced by those countries' literatures in turn. Certainly Troilus and Criseyde is a middle period work with its reliance on the forms of Italian poetry, little known in England at the time, but to which Chaucer was probably exposed during his frequent trips abroad on court business. In addition, its use of a classical subject and its elaborate, courtly language sets it apart as one of his most complete and well-formed works. In Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer draws heavily on his source, Boccaccio, and on the late Latin philosopher Boethius. However, it is The Canterbury Tales, wherein he focuses on English subjects, with bawdy jokes and respected figures often being undercut with humour, that has cemented his reputation.

Chaucer also translated such important works as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun). However, while many scholars maintain that Chaucer did indeed translate part of the text of Roman de la Rose as The Romaunt of the Rose, others claim that this has been effectively disproved. Many of his other works were very loose translations of, or simply based on, works from continental Europe. It is in this role that Chaucer receives some of his earliest critical praise. Eustache Deschamps wrote a ballade on the great translator and called himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In 1385 Thomas Usk made glowing mention of Chaucer, and John Gower, Chaucer's main poetic rival of the time, also lauded him. This reference was later edited out of Gower's Confessio Amantis and it has been suggested by some that this was because of ill feeling between them, but it is likely due simply to stylistic concerns.

One other significant work of Chaucer's is his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption.^[15] The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain.

Influence[link]

Linguistic[link]

Portrait of Chaucer from a manuscript by Thomas Hoccleve, who may have met Chaucer

Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic meter, a style which had developed since around the twelfth century as an alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre.^[16] Chaucer is known for metrical innovation, inventing the rhyme royal, and he was one of the first English poets to use the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentameter, in his work, with only a few anonymous short works using it before him.^[17] The arrangement of these five-stress lines into rhyming couplets, first seen in his The Legend of Good Women, was used in much of his later work and became one of the standard poetic forms in English. His early influence as a satirist is also important, with the common humorous device, the funny accent of a regional dialect, apparently making its first appearance in The Reeve's Tale.

The poetry of Chaucer, along with other writers of the era, is credited with helping to standardise the London Dialect of the Middle English language from a combination of the Kentish and Midlands dialects.^[18] This is probably overstated; the influence of the court, chancery and bureaucracy—of which Chaucer was a part—remains a more probable influence on the development of Standard English. Modern English is somewhat distanced from the language of Chaucer's poems owing to the effect of the Great Vowel Shift some time after his death. This change in the pronunciation of English, still not fully understood, makes the reading of Chaucer difficult for the modern audience. The status of the final -e in Chaucer's verse is uncertain: it seems likely that during the period of Chaucer's writing the final -e was dropping out of colloquial English and that its use was somewhat irregular. Chaucer's versification suggests that the final -e is sometimes to be vocalised, and sometimes to be silent; however, this remains a point on which there is disagreement. When it is vocalised, most scholars pronounce it as a schwa. Apart from the irregular spelling, much of the vocabulary is recognisable to the modern reader. Chaucer is also recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as the first author to use many common English words in his writings. These words were probably frequently used in the language at the time but Chaucer, with his ear for common speech, is the earliest manuscript source. Acceptable, alkali, altercation, amble, angrily, annex, annoyance, approaching, arbitration, armless, army, arrogant, arsenic, arc, artillery and aspect are just some of the many English words first attested in Chaucer.

Literary[link]

Widespread knowledge of Chaucer's works is attested by the many poets who imitated or responded to his writing. John Lydgate was one of the earliest poets to write continuations of Chaucer's unfinished Tales while Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid completes the story of Cressida left unfinished in his Troilus and Criseyde. Many of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works contain material from these poets and later appreciations by the romantic era poets were shaped by their failure to distinguish the later "additions" from original Chaucer. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers, such as John Dryden, admired Chaucer for his stories, but not for his rhythm and rhyme, as few critics could then read Middle English and the text had been butchered by printers, leaving a somewhat unadmirable mess.^[19] It was not until the late 19th century that the official Chaucerian canon, accepted today, was decided upon, largely as a result of Walter William Skeat's work. Roughly seventy-five years after Chaucer's death, The Canterbury Tales was selected by William Caxton to be one of the first books to be printed in England.

English[link]

Chaucer is sometimes considered the source of the English vernacular tradition and the "father" of modern English literature. His achievement for the language can be seen as part of a general historical trend towards the creation of a vernacular literature, after the example of Dante, in many parts of Europe. A parallel trend in Chaucer's own lifetime was underway in Scotland through the work of his slightly earlier contemporary, John Barbour, and was likely to have been even more general, as is evidenced by the example of the Pearl Poet in the north of England.

Although Chaucer's language is much closer to Modern English than the text of Beowulf, such that (unlike that of Beowulf) a Modern English-speaker with a large vocabulary of archaic words may understand it, it differs enough that most publications modernise his idiom. Following is a sample from the prologue of "The Summoner's Tale" that compares Chaucer's text to a modern translation:

Critical reception[link]

Early criticism[link]

The poet Thomas Hoccleve, who may have met Chaucer and considered him his role model, hailed Chaucer as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage."^[21] John Lydgate referred to Chaucer within his own text The Fall of Princes as the "lodesterre ... off our language".^[22] Around two centuries later, Sir Philip Sidney greatly praised Troilus and Criseyde in his own Defence of Poesie.^[23]

Manuscripts and audience[link]

The large number of surviving manuscripts of Chaucer's works is testimony to the enduring interest in his poetry prior to the arrival of the printing press. There are 83 surviving manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (in whole or part) alone, along with sixteen of Troilus and Criseyde, including the personal copy of Henry IV.^[24] Given the ravages of time, it is likely that these surviving manuscripts represent hundreds since lost. Chaucer's original audience was a courtly one, and would have included women as well as men of the upper social classes. Yet even before his death in 1400, Chaucer's audience had begun to include members of the rising literate, middle and merchant classes, which included many Lollard sympathisers who may well have been inclined to read Chaucer as one of their own, particularly in his satirical writings about friars, priests, and other church officials. In 1464, John Baron, a tenant farmer in Agmondesham, was brought before John Chadworth, the Bishop of Lincoln, on charges he was a Lollard heretic; he confessed to owning a "boke of the Tales of Caunterburie" among other suspect volumes.^[25]

Printed editions[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

William Caxton, the first English printer, was responsible for the first two folio editions of The Canterbury Tales which were published in 1478 and 1483.^[26] Caxton's second printing, by his own account, came about because a customer complained that the printed text differed from a manuscript he knew; Caxton obligingly used the man's manuscript as his source. Both Caxton editions carry the equivalent of manuscript authority. Caxton's edition was reprinted by his successor, Wynkyn de Worde, but this edition has no independent authority.

Richard Pynson, the King's Printer under Henry VIII for about twenty years, was the first to collect and sell something that resembled an edition of the collected works of Chaucer, introducing in the process five previously printed texts that we now know are not Chaucer's. (The collection is actually three separately printed texts, or collections of texts, bound together as one volume.) There is a likely connection between Pynson's product and William Thynne's a mere six years later. Thynne had a successful career from the 1520s until his death in 1546, when he was one of the masters of the royal household. His editions of Chaucers Works in 1532 and 1542 were the first major contributions to the existence of a widely recognised Chaucerian canon. Thynne represents his edition as a book sponsored by and supportive of the king who is praised in the preface by Sir Brian Tuke. Thynne's canon brought the number of apocryphal works associated with Chaucer to a total of 28, even if that was not his intention. As with Pynson, once included in the Works, pseudepigraphic texts stayed within it, regardless of their first editor's intentions.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Chaucer was printed more than any other English author, and he was the first author to have his works collected in comprehensive single-volume editions in which a Chaucer canon began to cohere. Some scholars contend that sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer's Works set the precedent for all other English authors in terms of presentation, prestige and success in print. These editions certainly established Chaucer's reputation, but they also began the complicated process of reconstructing and frequently inventing Chaucer's biography and the canonical list of works which were attributed to him.

Probably the most significant aspect of the growing apocrypha is that, beginning with Thynne's editions, it began to include medieval texts that made Chaucer appear as a proto-Protestant Lollard, primarily the Testament of Love and The Plowman's Tale. As "Chaucerian" works that were not considered apocryphal until the late nineteenth century, these medieval texts enjoyed a new life, with English Protestants carrying on the earlier Lollard project of appropriating existing texts and authors who seemed sympathetic—or malleable enough to be construed as sympathetic—to their cause. 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. The famous Plowman's Tale did not enter Thynne's Works until the second, 1542, edition. Its entry was surely facilitated by Thynne's inclusion of Thomas Usk's Testament of Love in the first edition. The Testament of Love imitates, borrows from, and thus resembles Usk's contemporary, Chaucer. (Testament of Love also appears to borrow from Piers Plowman.) Since the Testament of Love mentions its author's part in a failed plot (book 1, chapter 6), his imprisonment, and (perhaps) a recantation of (possibly Lollard) heresy, all this was associated with Chaucer. (Usk himself was executed as a traitor in 1388.) Interestingly, John Foxe took this recantation of heresy as a defence of the true faith, calling Chaucer a "right Wiclevian" and (erroneously) identifying him as a schoolmate and close friend of John Wycliffe at Merton College, Oxford. (Thomas Speght is careful to highlight these facts in his editions and his "Life of Chaucer.") No other sources for the Testament of Love exist—there is only Thynne's construction of whatever manuscript sources he had.

John Stow (1525–1605) was an antiquarian and also a chronicler. His edition of Chaucer's Works in 1561^[27] brought the apocrypha to more than 50 titles. More were added in the seventeenth century, and they remained as late as 1810, well after Thomas Tyrwhitt pared the canon down in his 1775 edition.^[28] The compilation and printing of Chaucer's works was, from its beginning, a political enterprise, since it was intended to establish an English national identity and history that grounded and authorised the Tudor monarchy and church. What was added to Chaucer often helped represent him favourably to Protestant England.

Engraving of Chaucer from Speght's edition

In his 1598 edition of the Works, Speght (probably taking cues from Foxe) made good use of Usk's account of his political intrigue and imprisonment in the Testament of Love to assemble a largely fictional "Life of Our Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer." Speght's "Life" presents readers with an erstwhile radical in troubled times much like their own, a proto-Protestant who eventually came around the king's views on religion. Speght states that "In the second year of Richard the second, the King tooke Geffrey Chaucer and his lands into his protection. The occasion wherof no doubt was some daunger and trouble whereinto he was fallen by favouring some rash attempt of the common people." Under the discussion of Chaucer's friends, namely John of Gaunt, Speght further explains:

Yet it seemeth that [Chaucer] was in some trouble in the daies of King Richard the second, as it may appeare in the Testament of Loue: where hee doth greatly complaine of his owne rashnesse in following the multitude, and of their hatred of him for bewraying their purpose. And in that complaint which he maketh to his empty purse, I do find a written copy, which I had of Iohn Stow (whose library hath helped many writers) wherein ten times more is adjoined, then is in print. Where he maketh great lamentation for his wrongfull imprisonment, wishing death to end his daies: which in my iudgement doth greatly accord with that in the Testament of Love. Moreover we find it thus in Record.

Later, in "The Argument" to the Testament of Love, Speght adds:

Chaucer did compile this booke as a comfort to himselfe after great griefs conceiued for some rash attempts of the commons, with whome he had ioyned, and thereby was in feare to loose the fauour of his best friends.

Speght is also the source of the famous tale of Chaucer being fined for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street, as well as a fictitious coat of arms and family tree. Ironically—and perhaps consciously so—an introductory, apologetic letter in Speght's edition from Francis Beaumont defends the unseemly, "low", and bawdy bits in Chaucer from an elite, classicist position. Francis Thynne noted some of these inconsistencies in his Animadversions, insisting that Chaucer was not a commoner, and he objected to the friar-beating story. Yet Thynne himself underscores Chaucer's support for popular religious reform, associating Chaucer's views with his father William Thynne's attempts to include The Plowman's Tale and The Pilgrim's Tale in the 1532 and 1542 Works.

The myth of the Protestant Chaucer continues to have a lasting impact on a large body of Chaucerian scholarship. Though it is extremely rare for a modern scholar to suggest Chaucer supported a religious movement that didn't exist until more than a century after his death, the predominance of this thinking for so many centuries left it for granted that Chaucer was at least extremely hostile toward Catholicism. This assumption forms a large part of many critical approaches to Chaucer's works, including neo-Marxism.

Alongside Chaucer's Works, the most impressive literary monument of the period is John Foxe's Acts and Monuments.... As with the Chaucer editions, it was critically significant to English Protestant identity and included Chaucer in its project. Foxe's Chaucer both derived from and contributed to the printed editions of Chaucer's Works, particularly the pseudepigrapha. Jack Upland was first printed in Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and then it appeared in Speght's edition of Chaucer's Works. Speght's "Life of Chaucer" echoes Foxe's own account, which is itself dependent upon the earlier editions that added the Testament of Love and The Plowman's Tale to their pages. Like Speght's Chaucer, Foxe's Chaucer was also a shrewd (or lucky) political survivor. In his 1563 edition, Foxe "thought it not out of season ... to couple ... some mention of Geoffrey Chaucer" with a discussion of John Colet, a possible source for John Skelton's character Colin Clout.

Probably referring to the 1542 Act for the Advancement of True Religion, Foxe said that he "marvel[s] to consider ... how the bishops, condemning and abolishing all manner of English books and treatises which might bring the people to any light of knowledge, did yet authorise the works of Chaucer to remain still and to be occupied; who, no doubt, saw into religion as much almost as even we do now, and uttereth in his works no less, and seemeth to be a right Wicklevian, or else there never was any. And that, all his works almost, if they be thoroughly advised, will testify (albeit done in mirth, and covertly); and especially the latter end of his third book of the Testament of Love ... Wherein, except a man be altogether blind, he may espy him at the full: although in the same book (as in all others he useth to do), under shadows covertly, as under a visor, he suborneth truth in such sort, as both privily she may profit the godly-minded, and yet not be espied of the crafty adversary. And therefore the bishops, belike, taking his works but for jests and toys, in condemning other books, yet permitted his books to be read."

It is significant, too, that Foxe's discussion of Chaucer leads into his history of "The Reformation of the Church of Christ in the Time of Martin Luther" when "Printing, being opened, incontinently ministered unto the church the instruments and tools of learning and knowledge; which were good books and authors, which before lay hid and unknown. The science of printing being found, immediately followed the grace of God; which stirred up good wits aptly to conceive the light of knowledge and judgment: by which light darkness began to be espied, and ignorance to be detected; truth from error, religion from superstition, to be discerned."

Foxe downplays Chaucer's bawdy and amorous writing, insisting that it all testifies to his piety. Material that is troubling is deemed metaphoric, while the more forthright satire (which Foxe prefers) is taken literally.

Spine and Titlepage of the 1721 John Urry edition of Chaucer's complete works

John Urry produced the first edition of the complete works of Chaucer in a Latin font, published posthumously in 1721. Included were several tales, according to the editors, for the first time printed, a biography of Chaucer, a glossary of old English words, and testimonials of author writers concerning Chaucer dating back to the 16th century. According to A.S.G Edwards, "This was the first collected edition of Chaucer to be printed in roman type. The life of Chaucer prefixed to the volume was the work of the Reverend John Dart, corrected and revised by Timothy Thomas. The glossary appended was also mainly compiled by Thomas. The text of Urry's edition has often been criticised by subsequent editors for its frequent conjectural emendations, mainly to make it conform to his sense of Chaucer's metre. The justice of such criticisms should not obscure his achievement. His is the first edition of Chaucer for nearly a hundred and fifty years to consult any manuscripts and is the first since that of William Thynne in 1534 to seek systematically to assemble a substantial number of manuscripts to establish his text. It is also the first edition to offer descriptions of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works, and the first to print texts of 'Gamelyn' and 'The Tale of Beryn', works ascribed to, but not by, Chaucer."

Modern scholarship[link]

Although Chaucer's works were admired for many years, serious scholarly work on his legacy did not begin until the nineteenth century. Scholars such as Frederick James Furnivall, who founded the Chaucer Society in 1868, pioneered the establishment of diplomatic editions of Chaucer's major texts, along with careful accounts of Chaucer's language and prosody. Walter William Skeat, who like Furnivall was closely associated with the Oxford English Dictionary, established the base text of all of Chaucer's works with his edition, published by Oxford University Press. Later editions by John H. Fisher and Larry D. Benson have offered further refinements, along with critical commentary and bibliographies.

With the textual issues largely addressed, if not solved, the questions of Chaucer's themes, structure, and audience were addressed. In 1966, the Chaucer Review was founded, and has maintained its position as the preeminent journal of Chaucer studies.

Popular culture[link]

• Powell and Pressburger's 1944 film A Canterbury Tale opens with a re-creation of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims; the film itself takes place on the road to, and in, wartime Canterbury.
• The plot of the detective novel Landscape with Dead Dons by Robert Robinson centres on the apparent rediscovery of The Book of the Leoun, and a passage from it (eleven lines of good Chaucerian pastiche) turn out to be the vital murder clue as well as proving that the "rediscovered" poem is an elaborate, clever forgery by the murderer (a Chaucer scholar).
• In Rudyard Kipling's story "Dayspring Mishandled", a writer plans an elaborate revenge on a former friend, a Chaucer expert, who has insulted the woman he loves, by fabricating a "medieval" manuscript sheet containing an alleged fragment of a lost Canterbury Tale (actually his own composition).
• Both an asteroid and a lunar crater have been named for Chaucer.
• A (fictionalized) version of Chaucer was portrayed by Paul Bettany in the movie A Knight's Tale.
• Kafka's Soup, a literary pastiche in the form of a cookbook, contains a recipe for onion tart à la Chaucer.

Works[link]

The following major works are in rough chronological order but scholars still debate the dating of most of Chaucer's output and works made up from a collection of stories may have been compiled over a long period.

Major works[link]

• Translation of Roman de la Rose, possibly extant as The Romaunt of the Rose
• The Book of the Duchess
• The House of Fame
• Anelida and Arcite
• Parlement of Foules
• Translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as Boece
• Troilus and Criseyde
• The Legend of Good Women
• The Canterbury Tales
• Treatise on the Astrolabe

Short poems[link]

Balade to Rosemounde

• An ABC
• Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn
• The Complaint unto Pity
• The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse
• The Complaint of Mars
• The Complaint of Venus
• A Complaint to His Lady
• The Former Age
• Fortune
• Gentilesse
• Lak of Stedfastnesse
• Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan
• Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton
• Proverbs
• Balade to Rosemounde
• Truth
• Womanly Noblesse

Poems of dubious authorship[link]

• Against Women Unconstant
• A Balade of Complaint
• Complaynt D'Amours
• Merciles Beaute
• The Equatorie of the Planets – A rough translation of a Latin work derived from an Arab work of the same title. It is a description of the construction and use of a planetary equatorium, which was used in calculating planetary orbits and positions (at the time it was believed the sun orbited the Earth). The similar Treatise on the Astrolabe, not usually doubted as Chaucer's work, in addition to Chaucer's name as a gloss to the manuscript are the main pieces of evidence for the ascription to Chaucer. However, the evidence Chaucer wrote such a work is questionable, and as such is not included in The Riverside Chaucer. If Chaucer did not compose this work, it was probably written by a contemporary.

Presumedly lost works[link]

• Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde, possible translation of Innocent III's De miseria conditionis humanae
• Origenes upon the Maudeleyne
• The Book of the Leoun – The Book of the Leon is mentioned in Chaucer's retraction. It is likely he wrote such a work; one suggestion is that the work was such a bad piece of writing it was lost, but if that had been the case, Chaucer would not have mentioned it. A likely source dictates it was probably a 'redaction of Guillaume de Machaut's 'Dit dou lyon,' a story about courtly love, a subject about which Chaucer frequently wrote.

Spurious works[link]

• The Pilgrim's Tale – written in the sixteenth century with many Chaucerian allusions
• The Plowman's Tale or The Complaint of the Ploughman – a Lollard satire later appropriated as a Protestant text
• Pierce the Ploughman's Crede – a Lollard satire later appropriated by Protestants
• The Ploughman's Tale – its body is largely a version of Thomas Hoccleve's "Item de Beata Virgine"
• "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" – Richard Roos's translation of a poem of the same name by Alain Chartier
• The Testament of Love – actually by Thomas Usk
• Jack Upland – a Lollard satire
• The Floure and the Leafe – a 15th century allegory

Derived works[link]

• God Spede the Plough – Borrows twelve stanzas of Chaucer's Monk's Tale

See also[link]

	Poetry portal
	Literature portal

• John V. Fleming, eminent Chaucerian, emeritus, at Princeton University
• Medieval literature
• Middle English literature
• Charles Muscatine, a Chaucer scholar, deceased, formerly at University of California, Berkeley
• Translation

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Chaucer: Life-Records, Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olsen. (1966)
• Hopper, Vincent Foster, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Selected): An Interlinear Translation, Barron's Educational Series, 1970, ISBN 0-8120-0039-0
• Morley, Henry, A first sketch of English literature, Cassell & Co., 1883, from Harvard University
• Skeat, W.W., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899.
• Speirs, John, "Chaucer the Maker", London: Faber and Faber, 1951
• The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. Houghton-Mifflin, 1987 ISBN 0-395-29031-7
• Ward, Adolphus W. (1907). Chaucer. Edinburgh: R. & R. Clark, Ltd 

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Geoffrey Chaucer

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Geoffrey Chaucer

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Geoffrey Chaucer

• Works by Geoffrey Chaucer at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Geoffrey Chaucer in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Poems by Geoffrey Chaucer at PoetryFoundation.org
• Hulbert, James Root (1912). Chaucer's official life .... Collegiate Press, G. Banta Pub. Co. pp. 75. http://books.google.com/books/about/Chaucer_s_official_life.html?id=17wLAAAAYAAJ. Retrieved 2011-07-12. 
• Early Editions of Chaucer
• eChaucer: Full Texts, Modern Translation, and Easy-To-Use Concordance
• BBC television adaptation of certain of the Canterbury Tales
• "Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog" (A Chaucer parody blog)
• Chaucer at The Online Library of Liberty
• Geoffrey Chaucer on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)

Educational institutions[link]

• Caxton's Chaucer Complete digitised texts of Caxton's two earliest editions of the Canterbury Tales from the British Library
• Caxton's Canterbury Tales: The British Library Copies An online edition with complete transcriptions and images captured by the HUMI Project
• Chaucer Metapage – Project in addition to the 33rd International Congress of Medieval Studies
• Chaucer Page by Harvard University
• Three near-contemporary portraits of Chaucer
• Astronomy & Astrology in Chaucer's Work
• Chaucer and his works: Introduction to Chaucer and his works | Descriptions of books with images

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2010)

Mark Steel
Mark Steel in 2008
Born	(1960-07-04) 4 July 1960 (age 51) Swanley, Kent, United Kingdom
Medium	Stand-up, Television, Radio
Nationality	British
Years active	1983-present
Genres	Political satire
Subject(s)	Politics
Influences	Tony Cliff
Notable works and roles	The Mark Steel Lectures The Mark Steel Revolution The Mark Steel Solution Mark Steel's in Town
Website	http://www.marksteelinfo.com/

Mark Steel (born 4 July 1960)^[1] is an English socialist columnist, author and comedian. A stand-up comedian known for his left-wing beliefs (he was a long-standing member of the Socialist Workers Party before he resigned in 2007), he has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in printed media. He is perhaps best known for presenting The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Revolution, The Mark Steel Solution, and Mark Steel's in Town.

Early life[link]

Steel was adopted a few days after he was born.^[2] He grew up in Swanley, Kent. He was expelled from Swanley Comprehensive School for attending a cricket course at the age of 15,^{[clarification needed]} and went on to work in a garage. From there he went on to make his first public performance as a poet.

In the late 1970s his father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stonehouse Hospital. The shabby conditions of the home reinforced Steel's political beliefs.^[3]

Career[link]

Steel has given varying accounts of his early life: he became bored with constantly being asked how he had started in comedy and took to telling the questioner the first thing that came into his head. He is often described as having worked as a television repair man^[4] but confesses that he has no technical ability whatsoever. He worked the comedy circuit for several years, and then in 1992 presented a satirical radio show The Mark Steel Solution on BBC Radio 5, consisting of half-hour monologues which offered solutions to social problems. It ran to four series. It's Not a Runner Bean, a comic autobiography, was published in 1996, and this led to a column in The Guardian.

Steel wrote a column for The Guardian between 1996 and 1999. He was sacked by that newspaper, according to him because The Guardian wanted to "realign towards Tony Blair" - though The Guardian denies this. In 2000 he started writing a weekly column for The Independent, which appears in the Wednesday Opinion Column.

He has written and performed several radio and television series for the BBC, and authored several books, as detailed below.

In 2005 he toured the UK and Ireland, where he discussed the French revolution in a light-hearted style.

Personal life[link]

Steel is a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C. and Kent County Cricket Club and enjoys watching both play on occasion. He was interviewed by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special during the South Africa series, giving an interview on his love of cricket.^[5]

He has a son (Elliot) and a daughter (Eloise) from a relationship, but he and his partner separated in 2006.^[6]

Politics[link]

During the Thatcher years, when he was in his 20s, Steel developed his left-wing political views. His anger and frustration at society's injustices were vented by political protests, punk rock and poetry.

Seeing the Soviet Union as "shit", and state capitalist rather than truly socialist, Steel joined the Socialist Workers Party rather than the Communist Party.^[3] He attended marches, strikes and demonstrations, and was present at the death of Blair Peach. In the early '80s he also persuaded his mother to allow striking steelworkers to spend a night in the Steel residence.^[3] His political activism continued throughout the decade, from the miners' strike through to the Poll Tax Riots. During this time he moved into a squat with his old friend Mick Hannan, before taking up residence in a flat.^[3]

In 2000 Steel took part in the London Assembly elections on behalf of the London Socialist Alliance (part of the Socialist Alliance) in the Croydon and Sutton constituency; he received 1,823 votes (1.5 per cent of the vote).

In 2007 he left the SWP and justified his decision in his book What's Going On? In the book he wrote that he left the party because whilst the membership base had become smaller and smaller, the members that remained became increasingly deluded regarding the size and relevance of the organisation. He also condemned the manner in which, at a time when there was broad public support for socialist ideals, increasingly bitter and futile in-fighting on the left made political success impossible. Alex Callinicos, International Secretary of the SWP, reviewed the book in the Socialist Review, arguing that it "evinces a kind of grandiose ignorance" and that "the only principle one can detect here is that the SWP is always in the wrong".^[7] Literary critic Nicholas Lezard praised the book in The Guardian, particularly for its discussion of the break-up of Steel's relationship, which "gives it a poignancy and depth which at its outset one might not have expected".^[8]

Steel is a Palestinian human rights activist, having been a member of the British-based ENOUGH! coalition that seeks to end the "Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank."^[9]

Radio and television[link]

Radio[link]

• The Mark Steel Solution (1992, 1994–1996) BBC Radio 5, BBC Radio 4, repeated BBC 7
• The Mark Steel Revolution (1998) BBC Radio 4, (2007) repeated BBC 7 Australia - Radio National 17.30 2009-01-13 to 2009-01-16 and 2009-01-19 to 2009-01-23
• The Mark Steel Lectures (1999–2002) BBC Radio 4, (2007) repeated BBC 7
• Dedicated Troublemaker (2004) BBC Radio 4
• Mark Steel's in Town (2009–2011) BBC Radio 4

He has also contributed to or appeared on the following shows:

• The Good Human Guide BBC Radio 2(1985). Contributing writer.
• Extra Time BBC Radio 5. Presenter. Sports programme.
• Late Edition BBC Radio 4 (1995). Regular panellist on this satirical talk show.
• The News Quiz BBC Radio 4 several occasions from the late 1990s onwards. Guest panellist on this satirical news based panel game.
• Loose Ends BBC Radio 4. Interviewee.
• Midweek BBC Radio 4. Interviewee.
• Excess Baggage BBC Radio 4. Interviewee.
• Test Match Special BBC Radio 4. Lunchtime interviewee, 1 August 2008 - England vs South Africa, 3rd test, Edgbaston.
• I've Never Seen Star Wars BBC Radio 4 (2008). Interviewee
• Heresy BBC Radio 4 (2009).

Television[link]

• The Mark Steel Lectures BBC Four (2003, 2004, 2006). Writer and Presenter. Television version of his radio programme of the same title. Produced in association with The Open University.

He also appeared in the following shows:

• Red Dwarf BBC Two (1989). Playing 'Ski-man' in episode "Timeslides" (non-speaking part).
• Loose Talk (1994). Guest.
• The Late Jonathan Ross (1996). Guest.
• Does China Exist. (1997).
• If I Ruled the World BBC Two (1998). Guest panellist.
• Lamarr's Attacks BBC Two (2000). Guest.
• Never Mind the Buzzcocks BBC Two (2000, 2001). Guest panellist on the satirical music based panel game.
• Have I Got News for You BBC One (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). Guest panellist on this satirical news based panel game.
• Question Time BBC One (2003, 2005, 2012). Guest panellist on discussion show.
• QI BBC Two, BBC Four (2004, 2005, 2006). Guest panellist.
• Mock the Week, BBC Two (2005, 2006). Guest panellist.
• Room 101 BBC Two, (2006). Guest

Bibliography[link]

• Printed
  • Vive La Revolution (2003) ISBN 0-7432-0805-6, (2004) ISBN 0-7432-0806-4 History of the French Revolution.
  • Reasons To Be Cheerful (2001) ISBN 0-7432-0803-X, (2002) ISBN 0-7432-0804-8 Autobiography concentrating on political activism.
  • It's Not A Runner Bean (1996) ISBN 1-899344-12-8, (2004) ISBN 1-904316-43-3 Autobiography concentrating on his comedy career.
  • What's Going On? The Meanderings of a Comic Mind in Confusion (2008) ISBN 1-84737-281-9 Autobiography charting changes to his own personal life and the politics of the left.

• Audiobooks
  • Reasons to Be Cheerful: From Punk to New Labour Through the Eyes of a Dedicated Troublemaker (2001) cassette ISBN 0-7435-0062-8

See also[link]

• List of newspaper columnists

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mark Steel's official website
• Open University site dedicated to the television version of The Mark Steel Lectures.
• Interviews at LeftLion, The Third Estate, and Socialist Review.

• Audio Files
  • The Russian Revolution: Was It A Coup? - Lecture at Marxism 1999 (MP3)
  • Karl Marx - Part 2 - Lecture at Marxism 2002 (MP3)
  • The French Revolution - Part 2 - Lecture at Marxism 2002 (MP3)
  • Viva La Revolution A Stand Up History Of The French Revolution - Part 2 - Lecture at Marxism 2003 (MP3)
  • Large selection of audio (mp3) and video (mp4) files available at www.marksteelinfo.com/audiovideo/

Bill Bailey
Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in 2008
Birth name	Mark Bailey[1]
Born	(1964-01-13) 13 January 1964 (age 48)[2] Bath, Somerset, England
Years active	1989–present
Genres	Surreal humour, Musical comedy, Satire
Spouse	Kristin Bailey[3] (1998–present)
Notable works and roles	Black Books Never Mind the Buzzcocks Hot Fuzz
Website	billbailey.co.uk

Bill Bailey (born Mark Bailey;^[1] 13 January^[2] 1964) is an English comedian, musician and actor. As well as his extensive stand-up work, Bailey is well known for his role in Black Books and his appearances on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI.

Bailey was listed by the Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in 2003. In 2007 and again in 2010, he was voted the 7th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups.^[4]

Personal life[link]

Bailey was born in Bath, Somerset and spent most of his childhood in Keynsham, a town situated between Bath and Bristol in the West of England. His father was a medical practitioner and his mother was a hospital ward sister. His maternal grandparents lived in an annexe, built on the side of the house by his maternal grandfather who was a stonemason and builder. Two rooms at the front of the family house were for his father's surgery.^[5]

Bailey was educated at King Edward's School, an independent school in Bath^[6] where he was initially a highly academic pupil winning most of the prizes. However, at about the age of 15 years, he started to become distracted from school work when he realised the thrill of performance as a member of a school band called Behind Closed Doors, which played mostly original work. He was the only pupil at his school to study A-level music and he passed with an A grade. He also claims to have been good at sport (captain of KES 2nd XI cricket team 1982), which often surprised his teachers. He would often combine music and sport by leading the singing on the long coach trip back from away rugby fixtures. It was here that he was given his nickname Bill by his music teacher, Ian Phipps, for being able to play the song "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" so well on the guitar.^[5]

He started studies for an English degree at Westfield College of the University of London but left after a year.^[7]

He spent his final years listening to Monty Python records, and rehearsing with a band called the "Famous Five",^[8] who he confesses were very bad but still much better than him and who actually had six members.^[9] However, he is a classically trained musician and received an Associateship Diploma from the London College of Music as well as being made an honorary member of the Society of Crematorium Organists. Despite this, he has said that he always had the temptation to be silly with music, a trait that influences his stand-up shows.

Bailey often mythologises his early years in his stand-up. In his show Bewilderness, he claims to have attended Bovington Gurney School of Performing Arts and Owl Sanctuary. He talks about a succession of jobs he had before becoming a comedian, including lounge pianist, crematorium organist, door-to-door door-salesman and accompanist for a mind-reading dog. A clip of Bailey's appearance in the dog's routine was shown during his Room 101 appearance. He also is self-deprecating about his appearance, suggesting he is so hairy that he is part troll, or that his hair or beard is a small animal named Lionel whom he has trained to sit 'very very still.'

Bailey also talks about his role as a "Disenfranchised Owl" in an experimental Welsh theatre troupe.^[10] Other acting roles included a part in a Workers' Revolutionary Party stage production called The Printers, which also featured Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour. His trivia page on IMDb also claims that he was awarded Best Actor in the 1986 Institut Français awards.

Bailey married Kristin in 1998. An avid Star Trek fan, he named his son (born 2003) not after the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character Dax as is often reported, but after a childhood friend,^[3] and often refers to himself as a Klingon (once claiming during his "Part Troll" tour that his ear-mounted microphone made him resemble "a wizard in a call centre" and "a Klingon motivational speaker").

He currently lives in Hammersmith and supports Queens Park Rangers.^[11] In 2010, Bailey endorsed the Labour Party in the upcoming General Election, appearing in the party's fifth party election broadcast of the 2010 campaign.^[12] He is also an outspoken feminist and supporter of the Fawcett Society.^[13][14] Bailey is a patron of International Animal Rescue and has been instrumental in the organisation's campaign to capture dancing bears.^[15][16]

Career[link]

Early stand-up[link]

Bailey began touring the country with other comedians such as Mark Lamarr. In 1984 he formed a double act, the Rubber Bishops, with Toby Longworth (a former fellow pupil at King Edward's, Bath). They achieved a certain amount of success on the club circuit, partly due to their rigorous schedule – sometimes as many as three or four gigs a night. It was here that Bailey began developing his own unique style, mixing in musical parodies with deconstructions of or variations on traditional jokes ("How many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb? One, no two! No four! No eight..."). According to comedy folklore, after a reviewer once criticised his act for its lack of jokes, Bailey returned the following night, at Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, to perform a set composed entirely of punchlines. Longworth left to join the RSC in 1989 and was replaced by Martin Stubbs.

Stubbs later quit to pursue a more serious career, and in 1994 Bailey performed Rock at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Sean Lock, a show about an ageing rockstar and his roadie, script-edited by comedy writer Jim Miller. It was later serialised for the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 1. However, the show's attendances were not impressive and on one occasion the only person in the audience was comedian Dominic Holland. Bailey almost gave up comedy to take up a telesales job.^[17]

He persevered, however, and went solo the next year with the one man show Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The show was very well received and led to a recording at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London which was broadcast in 1997 on Channel 4 as a one-hour special called Bill Bailey Live. It was not until 2005 that this was released in DVD uncut and under its original title. It marked the first time that Bailey had been able to tie together his music and post-modern gags with the whimsical rambling style he is now known for.

After supporting Donna McPhail in 1995 and winning a Time Out award, he returned to Edinburgh in 1996 with a critically acclaimed show that was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. Amongst the other nominees was future Black Books co-star Dylan Moran, who narrowly beat him in the closest vote in the award's history.

Bailey won the Best Live Stand-Up award at the British Comedy Awards, 1999.

Television[link]

Though he didn't win the Perrier in 1996, the nomination was enough to get him noticed, and in 1998 the BBC gave him his own television show, Is It Bill Bailey?

This was not Bailey's first foray into television. His debut was on the children's TV show Motormouth in the late 1980s, playing piano for a mind-reading dog. The trick went hilariously wrong, and Bailey reminisced about the experience on the BBC show Room 101 with Paul Merton in 2000. In 1991, he was appearing in stand-up shows such as The Happening, Packing Them In, The Stand Up Show, and The Comedy Store. He also appeared as captain on two panel games, an ITV music quiz pilot called Pop Dogs, and the poorly received Channel 4 science fiction quiz show, Space Cadets. However Is it Bill Bailey? was the first time he had written and presented his own show.

With his star on the rise and gaining public recognition, over the next few years, Bailey made well received guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News For You, World Cup Comedy, Room 101, Des O'Connor Tonight, Coast to Coast and three episodes of off-beat Channel 4 sitcom Spaced, in which he played comic-shop manager Bilbo Bagshot.

In 1998, Dylan Moran approached him with the pilot script for Black Books, a Channel 4 sitcom about a grumpy bookshop owner, his put-upon assistant, and their neurotic female friend. It was commissioned in 2000, and Bailey took the part of the assistant Manny Bianco, with Moran playing the owner Bernard, and Tamsin Greig the friend, Fran. Three series of six episodes were made, building up a large cult fanbase, providing the public awareness on which Bailey would build a successful national tour in 2001.

When Sean Hughes left his long-term role as a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2002, Bailey became his successor. His style quickly blended into the show, possibly helped by his background in music. He soon developed a rapport of sorts with host Mark Lamarr, who continually teased him about his looks and his pre-occupation with woodland animals. It was announced on 18 September 2008 that Bailey would be leaving the series and be replaced by a series of guest captains including Jack Dee and Dermot O'Leary.^[18] Whilst touring in 2009, Bailey joked that his main reason for leaving the show was a lack of desire to continue humming Britney Spears' "Toxic" to little known figures in the indie music scene. It was during this time that he also left his position as "curator" of the Museum of Curiosity, and declared his intention to "retire" from panel games, although he has since appeared on QI many more times and hosted Have I Got News For You.

Bailey has appeared frequently on the intellectual panel game QI since it began in 2003, appearing alongside host Stephen Fry and regular panellist Alan Davies. Other television appearances include a cameo role in Alan Davies' drama series Jonathan Creek as failing street magician Kenny Starkiss and obsessed guitar teacher in the "Holiday" episode of Sean Lock's Fifteen Storeys High. He later appeared with Lock again as a guest on his show TV Heaven, Telly Hell. He has also appeared twice on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Bailey also hosted his own show Comic's Choice, which aired in 2011.

Bailey also presented Wild Thing I Love You which began on Channel 4 on 15 October 2006. The series focuses on the protection of Britain's wild animals, and has included rehoming badgers, owls and water voles.

Bailey has most recently appeared in the second series of the E4 teenage "dramedy" Skins playing Maxxie's dad, Walter Oliver. In episode 1, Walter struggles with his son's desire to be a dancer, instead wishing him to become a builder, which is what he himself does for a living. Walter is married to Jackie, played by Fiona Allen.

Bailey appeared on the first episode of Grand Designs Live on 4 May 2008, helping Kevin McCloud build his eco-friendly home. In 2009 Bailey appeared in the BBC show Hustle as the character "Cyclops", a side-line character. In autumn 2009, Bailey presented Bill Bailey's Birdwatching Bonanza.^[19]

As a continuation of Bailey's recent foray into natural history, he presented ITV1's half-hour wildlife mini-series Baboons With Bill Bailey.^[20] The series was filmed in Cape Town and spanned 8 episodes, with exclusive content available on itvWILD.^[21]

Bill Bailey played Droxil, a Harvest Ranger from the Planet Androzani Major in the 2011 Christmas Special of Doctor Who, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.

International tours[link]

Bailey in concert, 2007

In 2001, Bailey began touring the globe with Bewilderness, which became a huge success. A recording of a performance in Swansea was released on DVD the same year, and the show was broadcast on Channel 4 that Christmas. A modified version of it also proved successful in America, and in 2002 Bailey released a CD of a recording at the WestBeth Theatre in New York. The show contained all his trademarks, popular music parodies (such as Unisex Chip Shop, a Billy Bragg tribute which he actually performed with Billy Bragg at the 2005 Glastonbury Festival), "three men in a pub" jokes (including one in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer) and deconstructions of television themes such as Countdown and The Magic Roundabout. A Bewilderness CD was sold outside gigs, which was actually just a mixture of studio recordings of songs and monologues Bailey had performed in the past – it was later released in shops as Bill Bailey: The Ultimate Collection... Ever!. That same year he also presented a Channel 4 countdown, Top Ten Prog Rock.

Bailey premiered his show Part Troll at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. A critical and commercial success, he then transferred it to the West End where tickets sold out in under 24 hours, and new dates had to be added. Since then he has toured it all over the UK as well as in America, Australia and New Zealand. The show marked the first time Bailey had really tackled political material, as he expanded on subjects such as the war on Iraq, which he had only touched upon before in his Bewilderness New York show. He also talks extensively on drugs, at one point asking the audience to name different ways of baking cannabis. A DVD was released in 2004.

2005 finally saw the release of his 1995 show Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The 2-disc set also contained a director's cut of Bewilderness, which featured a routine on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time not seen in the original version.

Bailey performed at show at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe entitled Steampunk. It looked set to become the fastest selling fringe show ever (beating the record Bailey set with The Odd Couple in 2005). But a ticketing mix-up forced the last 10% of tickets to be purchased in person from the venue rather than pre-booked, meaning the venue filled at a slower overall rate than it should have.

Bailey appeared at the Beautiful Days festival in August 2007. The UK leg of the Tinselworm tour enjoyed 3 sell-out nights at the MEN Arena in Manchester, Europe's largest indoor arena, and culminated with a sell-out performance at Wembley Arena.

Early in 2007, a petition was started to express fans' wishes to see him cast as a dwarf in the 2010 film The Hobbit, after his stand-up routine mentioned auditioning for Gimli in The Lord of the Rings. The petition reached its goal in the early days of January, and was sent to the producers. It was hoped that as the Tinselworm tour took him to Wellington in New Zealand where the film is in pre-production, that he would be able to audition.^[22]

Bill Bailey's most recent tour, titled Dandelion Mind, was released on DVD on 22 November 2010.

Other appearances[link]

2000[link]

• A small role in British comedy film Saving Grace

2001[link]

• 19 July: Panelist in Radio 4's show The 99p Challenge

2002[link]

• Voice for a BMW Mini advertising campaign
• Writer and performer for a series of British Airways adverts in which, through the use of music, he took a humorous look at several locations around the world
• Guest panellist on BBC Radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

2003[link]

• Juror No. 4 in Twelve Angry Men, directed by Guy Masterson for the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• Panelist on Radio 4's show Just a Minute (twice)
• 4 February: Panelist (for a second time) on Radio 4's show The 99p Challenge
• 21 October: Presented Good Vibrations: The History of the Theremin on Radio 4

2004[link]

• 24 October: appeared on Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. He finished with a time of 1:53.4 in the Suzuki Liana.

2005[link]

• Voice of the sperm whale in the 2005 film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Co-starred as Oscar in The Odd Couple (alongside Alan Davies), directed by Guy Masterson for the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
• One of the acts in the Birmingham show Jasper Carrott's Rock with Laughter, alongside other performers including Bonnie Tyler, Lenny Henry, Bobby Davro and the Lord of the Dance troupe
• Returned to Radio 4's Just a Minute for a third show as a panellist

2006[link]

• 15 March: Interviewed by Lenny Henry for BBC Radio 4 show Chain Reaction
• 22 March: Returned to Chain Reaction to interview Simon Pegg

2007[link]

• A minor part in Simon Pegg's and Edgar Wright's film Hot Fuzz, as a pair of desk sergeant twins. (Bailey had originally meant to also appear in Pegg and Wright's earlier film, Shaun of the Dead. but the commentary included with the DVD of that movie explains that he was busy with other commitments at the time.)
• February: Organised, produced, and starred in West End show Pinter's People, a collection of sketches by playwright Harold Pinter. The show also starred Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips and Geraldine McNulty
• March: Appeared at the International Human Beatbox Convention at the Southbank Centre in London, introducing Shlomo to the stage for the climax of the concert, as well as showing off his own beatboxing
• 4 May: Guest presenter for an episode of BBC One's Have I Got News for You (a role he returned to on 9 May 2008)
• July: Narrator for Nessy Tales, a series of animated reading books for dyslexic children

2008[link]

• Guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs
• February: Co-host of the first series of BBC Radio 4's panel show The Museum of Curiosity
• 9 May: Guest presenter for an episode of BBC One's Have I Got News for You
• 9 June: Guest on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.^[5] Later that day, appeared as Rushton in the first episode of an adaptation of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists on the same station
• 7 September: Guest on live Australian TV show Rove.^[23] In a questionnaire to win in 20 seconds, host Rove McManus asked his usual question, "Who would you turn gay for?". Bailey replied, "The pope"
• September: One of the hosts of the So You Think You're Funny comedy gala at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe^[24]
• 11 October: Guest on BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends
• 12 November: Performed for We Are Most Amused, a special comedy performance to celebrate the 60th birthday of Prince Charles

2010[link]

• 30 March: took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London.
• 27 June: appeared on Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, while impersonating Angelina Jolie. He finished with a time of 1:50.8 in the Kia Cee'd.
• 28 September: the first guest on new ABC TV conversation program A Quiet Word With ....^[25]

Music[link]

Bailey is a talented pianist and guitarist, and has perfect pitch; of this he has said

"Perfect pitch ... occurs entirely at random in about one in every 10,000 of us, and I'm one of them. From as early as I can remember, I was able to pick out the pitch of things, not just instruments but washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dentists' drills."^[26]

His stand-up routines often feature music from genres such as jazz, rock (most notably prog rock from the early seventies), drum'n'bass, rave, classical, and even theme songs, usually for comic value. Favourite instruments include the keyboard, guitar, theremin, kazoo and bongos. He also mentioned in an interview that he has achieved Grade 6 Clarinet. He was part of punk band Beergut 100,^[27] which he founded in 1995 with comedy writer Jim Miller and also featured Martin Trenaman and Phil Whelans, with Kevin Eldon as lead singer.^[28] The band performed at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.^[29] Trenaman and Welans had previously appeared in Cosmic Jam under the name "The Stan Ellis Experiment", and Trenaman and Eldon later featured with John Moloney in the Kraftwerk homage "Das Hokey Kokey" on the Part Troll tour. Bailey claims that he and the three other performers are a Kraftwerk tribute band called Augenblick. To mark the final gig of the Part Troll tour on 1 January 2005 the band reappeared on stage after the "Das Hokey Kokey" joke to play an hour-long encore of music.

In February 2007, Bailey appeared on two occasions with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Anne Dudley in a show entitled Cosmic Shindig. Performed in the Colosseum in Watford on 24 February and in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 26 February, the show contained orchestrally accompanied versions of many of Bailey's previously performed songs, an exploration of the instruments of the orchestra and a number of new pieces of music. The Queen Elizabeth Hall performance was aired on BBC Radio 3 on 16 March 2007 as a part of Comic Relief 2007.

Bailey had planned to put himself forward as Britain's Eurovision entry in 2008, as a result of several fan petitions encouraging him to do so.^[30]

In October 2008 he performed Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Anne Dudley.^[31]

In 2009, Bailey presented a project about the explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, in the form of an Indonesian travelogue.^[32] Bailey said in an interview that Wallace had been "airbrushed out of history", and that he feels a "real affinity" with him.

In November 2009 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.^[33]

In July 2011, Bailey performed at the Sonisphere Festival in Knebworth, headlining the Saturn Stage.^[34] He released an album, In Metal, using songs played at Sonisphere, later that year.

Tours[link]

• Cosmic Jam (1995)
• Bewilderness (2001)
• Part Troll (2004)
• Steampunk (2006) (Edinburgh Festival)
• Tinselworm (2008)
• Bill Bailey Live (2008–09) (Theatre tour with some material from Tinselworm, but mostly new material)
• Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2009)
• Dandelion Mind (2010)
• Dandelion Mind – Gently Modified (2011)

DVD releases[link]

Filmography[link]

• The James Whale Radio Show (TV series) (circa 1990) (Guest)
• Blue Heaven (Channel 4 TV series) (1994)
• Asylum (1996)
• Space Cadets (1997) (Regular team captain)
• Is It Bill Bailey? (1998)
• Spaced (1999–2001)
• Have I Got News for You (guest 1999, 2001, 2005; guest presenter 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011)
• Saving Grace (2000)
• Maid Marian and her Merry Men (1992). Cameo court jester to King John
• Black Books (2000–2004)
• Jonathan Creek
  • "Satan's Chimney" (2001)
  • "The Tailor's Dummy" (2003)
• Wild West (2002–2004)
• Never Mind the Buzzcocks (2002–2008) (Regular team captain)
• QI (2003–present) (Frequent guest)
• "15 Storeys High" – "The Holiday" (2004)
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) (Voice of the Sperm Whale)^[35]
• The Libertine (Small cameo role as advisor to Charles II of England).
• Wild Thing I Love You (2006) (Presenter)
• Top Gear (A Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car)
• Hot Fuzz (2007)
• Run Fatboy Run (2007) (Cameo)
• Skins (2008)
• Love Soup (2008)
• We Are Most Amused (2008) (One-off special)
• Hustle (as 'Cyclops')
  • "Return of the Prodigal" (2009)
  • "Diamond Seeker" (2009)
  • "Picasso Finger Painting" (2012)
• Steve's World (2009)
• Burke and Hare (2010)
• Bill Bailey's Bird Watching Bonanza (2010)
• Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010)
• Talkin' 'bout Your Generation (2010); one episode
• Jo Brand's Big Splash (2011); one episode
• Chalet Girl (2011)^[36]
• Doctor Who – The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (2011)^[37]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bill Bailey

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bill Bailey

• Official website
• Bill Bailey at the Internet Movie Database
• Bill Bailey discography at Discogs
• Bill Bailey at the British Film Institute's Screenonline.
• Bill Bailey on Chortle.