The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, mostly in verse, written by Geoffrey Chaucer chiefly from 1387 to 1400.
They are held together in a frame story of a pilgrimage on which each member of the group is to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury, and two on the way back.
Fewer than a quarter of the projected tales were completed before Chaucer's death.
The table below enumerates all the pilgrims mentioned in the General Prologue, plus two that materialise later in the tales, and the stories they tell.
The six tabulated below represent the four main orders (El, Cx, La, Pw) in which tales appear in the manuscripts, plus two significant anomalous arrangements (Hg, Ha).