Reddit reviews The Canterbury Tales

It's number one in British and Irish Poetry!

I don't know about adding stuff like the tale of beryn or finishing off the cook's tale, but the Nevill Coghill version is the adaptation most accepted by critics today.

Peter Ackroyd did a prose translation of it in modern English that's meant to be very good as well.

Either one retains the subversive humour of the original. I wouldn't worry about a feeling of cohesion - all Chaucer intended is a collection of tales. These two are very 'complete' as far as I can tell, and any incompleteness is only really frustrating to Chaucer scholars.

My personal take on them is that they are a fascinating way of getting into a medieval mind, so I read the original text, with help from notes of course. They are funny, rude, exciting ... this is high-quality entertainment. There's a reason they've survived 700 years.

this is the edition I'm using with my students right now and they seem to be pretty into it.