It took some time but finally recalled a title from Before, published in the fall of 2019, that I had been 'saving' for a shut-in time - Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner.
This isn't a lit crit study focused on literature, but social, cultural, political history, and not only that of England, but greater Europe.
Chaucer's times within the all important 14th century! He lives through the Bubonic Plague, as child in the first wave, and as a young man in the second wave of the later 1360's. His king was Edward III, various members of his family Chaucer served in various offices and in other ways.
As I'm currently suffering Edward III withdrawal since finishing the biography of him by Ian Mortimer, this is exactly what I want and need.
Liking the human history of the oceans, The Boundless Sea, very much, but I also need something more, o I dunno, that fills in more about the 14th century, the hinge century of Europe between medieval and 'modern.' Also, at the moment, Boundless Sea's author is enthralled with the centuries' repetition of the Indian Ocean trade between the East Coast of Africa, Egypt, the Red Sea, India and Southeast Asia, reaching up and down, eventually, into China proper. The same goods continue to be traded, whether B.C. or A.D. or even the 17th century, and generally in the same locations, though ports silt in, names change, still as the centuries roll along even more nationalities and languages appear. So, right now, a little slow.
. . . . The Diaries of John Quincy Adams .... Alas, JQ is no longer POTUS, though he has a difficult time letting go of D.C., but finally he moves back to Quincy, MA -- because his son George is lost at sea, evidently falling off a packet boat (it has been suggested in other books that George either fell overboard from being drunk or, due to being an Adams probably, committed suicide. His propensity for drinking too much could also be attributed to being an Adams. One of JQ's brothers was an alcoholic who committed suicide due to being unable to fulfill the family expectations, which were always beyond high. Only JQ lived up entirely to expectation.
George's death is truly sad, particularly for Louisa, who has lost so many children already, either from miscarriage or still birth, or in very early childhood. For once Louisa is mentioned in the Diaries with clearly stated sorrow and sympathy, beyond, "my wife unwell" -- which back in the day could mean with menstrual period (not many of those!) or because pregnant, or recovering from miscarriage or birth.
Somewhere around losing the presidency and Andrew Jackson entering it, JQ seems to have lost his interest in swimming in the Potomac, in favor of riding his good horse, and lost his passion for trees as well. At least there are no more entries in the Diaries (as edited, anyway) of either. I'm sorry for that, for they humanized JQ so much, and were amusing in their own right, as well as casting light upon publicly accepted behaviors of white men of a certain class in the America of the 1820's.
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. . . . We have arrived at the point of sketching out plans for leaving here. If fortunate, in the fall. Ya, work still seems to be coming in, but for how long? And it's not as though this is work that can't be done from somewhere else, as it is all writing work.
Additional local news: one of the people for whom I've been cooking has gone away, to live with his sister.
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