Derek Pearsall is the Gurney Professor of English at Harvard University and was Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, 1965-85. His numerous publications include John Lydgate (1970), Old English and Middle English Poetry (1977), The Canterbury Tales: A Critical Study (1985), An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Langland (1990) and The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1992).