Detail from The Canterbury Tales depicting Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) taken from the Ellesmere Chaucer, a highly decorated deluxe manuscript completed c. 1400-1410. The manuscript contains 22 minature paintings of the pilgrims who travelled in a group from Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Beckett in Canterbury. The Canterbury Tales consists of the stories they each told along the way. The manuscript was for three hundred years in the possession of Sir Thomas Egerton (later Baron Ellesmere) and his family.