Vanora Bennett
Page 56
In 1391, ten years after the Peasants’ Revolt, Chaucer dedicated his Treatise on the Astrolabe to ‘lyte Lowys my sone, of the tendir age of ten year’, and wrote the child an affectionate foreword. Lewis Chaucer, whose birth date suggests Philippa was not his mother, was listed in public records just once more, in a retinue roll at Carmarthen Castle in 1403, which listed him next to his elder brother, Thomas Chaucer. Thomas, Geoffrey Chaucer’s eldest son, did go on being mentioned in the records. He was to become one of the most wealthy, influential and distinguished men in England. Through his daughter Alice’s marriage to William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, he was the ancestor of a future heir to the throne of England.
After the death of Philippa Chaucer (probably in 1387, accompanying her Duchess to Castile for John of Gaunt’s last unsuccessful outing overseas), Geoffrey Chaucer went on a pilgrimage to Canterbury in 1388.
His writing is oddly – or perhaps diplomatically – short on references to the turbulent current affairs of his time. Yet there are hints of the upheavals Chaucer lived through in his work.
His greatest comic creation, in his unfinished poem about a pilgrimage, The Canterbury Tales (which he wrote in fits and starts over the rest of his life), was the Wife of Bath. This portrait of a rambunctious, wise-cracking, irreverent, independent-minded, profit-seeking female, who’s buried five husbands and may be out for a sixth, who has no time for priests yet loves nothing more than a good pilgrimage, is often said to be based on the character of Chaucer’s sometime patron, and King Edward III’s last mistress, Alice Perrers.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Susan Watt, Katie Espiner, Clare Hey and everyone else at HarperCollins Publishers for all the work that went into this book, as well as to Tif Loehnis and her colleagues at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, my kind and patient workspace colleagues at 115 Bartholomew Road and, of course, my lovely family.
About the Author
THE PEOPLE’S QUEEN
Vanora Bennett is the author of three novels, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, Queen of Silks, and Blood Royal, and an award-winning journalist. She has worked around the world for The Times of London, the Los Angeles Times and Reuters, and contributed to the Times Lterary Supplement, the Guardian, the Observer and the BBC. She lives in London with her husband and two children.
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Also by Vanora Bennett
Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Queen of Silks
Blood Royal
Copyright
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
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Copyright © Vanora Bennett 2010
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while many are based on real historical figures and events are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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