Canterbury Tales - best edition ?

I'm interested in getting Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . What edition should I try to find ?

I'm currently reading The Lifetime Reading Plan, which recommends the translations by either Lumiansky,Coghill or Wright. Hope that helps.

It's actually pretty easy to read in the original Middle English, as long as you get an edition with decent glosses.

There's an edition in the current Everyman's library that suits quite nicely.

My late father-in-law had the Everyman's Library edition, and a modern English edition translated by Joseph Glaser.

Based on the number of index cards that fell out of them and the number of underscores (in red) throughout both books, I'd have to say that it seems he preferred the latter.

mstrust,
I love books about books! The Lifetime Reading Plan and its successor, The New Lifetime Reading Plan, are the best of the genre.

I read a modern English version of the Cantebury Tales; don't recall which one.

Sandydog1-
Me too! Someone on this site was talking about following this book for a year so I had to get it. Now I've had to promise to loan it to a friend because I raved about it. I also really liked 501 Must-Read Books.

Last night I purchased the Penguin Classics edition trans. by Nevill Coghill . Can't wait to get started reading it !

mstrust, Thanks for the suggestion of 501 Must-Read books. It sounds much better than that abyssmal 1001 books to read before you die. What a weird selection THAT was.

Quite welcome. Another you might want to check out is Literature: A Crash Course. It's a very small, slim book but packed with an amazing amount of information.

My university always used the Riverside Chaucer, but next term the 3rd year class is using the Broadview edition, edited by Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor. Seems like a nice edition, and much cheaper than the Riverside (which the 4th year class is still using).

According to The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, the best one to try is the Penguin Classics edition by Coghill. She also notes that if you want to try your hand at Middle Endlish then you should try the Norton Critical Edition called Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue. It has plenty of vocabulary notes and explanitory footnotes.

#11, Becky-Quilts, Good point. As a general rule, I find both Penguin Classics and Norton Critical editions superb, whatever book you're looking at. Can't go wrong with those. I browsed through my Broadview this afternoon and it appears to have a very readable introduction, lots of notes, and glosses on almost every line, so I'm expecting it to be good. Plus, the prof is a Chaucer guru, and she wouldn't work inferior material. I'll report back at the end of term if I'm disappointed with it!