Associate Professor, 1924–1930

This chapter mainly treats Manly and Edith’s first years working on their edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The edition was not to be based on selected manuscripts as in the past, but on all extant manuscripts and early printed texts. In December 1926 the Rockefeller Foundation recommended that Manly and Rickert work full time on the project for five years, with an annual budget of $50,000. When funding materialized, however, it was for $23,000 with only half salaries for Manly and Rickert. Undeterred, they set up their “Chaucer Laboratory” in Chicago and arranged to spend half the year teaching there and the other half in London working on the edition and, in a new project, revising the Chaucer Society’s multi-volume Life Records of Chaucer (1875–1900). Meanwhile Edith further consolidated her academic career with her New Methods for the Study of Literature (1927).