Publisher's Synopsis
More is known about Thomas Hoccleve than about most Middle English poets, partly because, like Chaucer, he was a ?civil servant? (in the office of the Privy Seal), and partly because, unlike Chaucer, he wrote a good deal about himself. Hence the present book can offer something like a biography, setting the poems in the context of a life; few Middle English writers can be so fully understood in the context within which they worked.
