Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer CoghillFRSL (19 April 1899[1] – 6 November 1980) was an Anglo-Irish literary scholar, known especially for his modern-English version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.[2]
Life
His father was Sir Egerton Coghill, 5th Baronet[1] and his younger brother the actor Ambrose Coghill. Nevill was named after his uncle, Nevill Coghill, who was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously at the Battle of Isandlwana.[3]
In 1968, he collaborated with Martin Starkie to co-write the West-End and Broadway musical Canterbury Tales. The musical was a great success internationally, receiving four Tony nominations.[4] In 1973, the same team collaborated on a sequel The Homeward Ride comprising more of Chaucer's Tale.[5]
Nevill himself was born in 1899, served in the First War, married, fathered a daughter, then separated from his wife and lived a quietly homosexual life thereafter. He later spoke to me of several romances with men, but he apparently never established a residence with any of them; and until his retirement from Oxford, he always lived in his college rooms.[6]
Works
The Pardon of Piers Plowman (1945)
The Masque of Hope (1948)
Visions from Piers Plowman (1949)
The Poet Chaucer (1949; 2nd ed. 1967)
The Canterbury Tales: Translated into Modern English (1952)
Geoffrey Chaucer (1956)
Shakespeare's Professional Skills (1964)
Langland: Piers Plowman (1964)
Troilus and Criseyde: Translated into Modern English (1971), ISBN 9780140442397, ISBN 0141914513