cover image Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World

Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World

Donald R. Howard. Ballantine Books, $27 (676pp) ISBN 978-0-449-90341-4

In this massive biography, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award, Howard, professor of English at Stanford, scans the public and private events of Chaucer's life for their significance to his humanistic art. ``Written in a Chaucerian spirit of inquiry and empathy, this is arguably the best literary biography of Chaucer to date,'' observed PW. Photos. (Feb.)