author
Best known for the lively Middle English tale The Wright’s Chaste Wife, this medieval writer survives more through one memorable work than through a clearly documented life. Even the name appears in different forms, which adds to the mystery around the author.
Adam of Cobsam, also written as Adam of Cobham, is the attributed author of The Wright’s Chaste Wife, a comic Middle English tale usually associated with the fifteenth century. Modern library and text records consistently connect the poem with that name, and editions such as Project Gutenberg and the University of Michigan’s Middle English text catalog preserve the attribution.
Very little seems to be known for certain about the person behind the name. In practice, Adam of Cobsam is remembered almost entirely through this one surviving work, a sharp, playful fabliau-style story that has continued to attract readers, editors, and students of medieval literature.
Because the historical record is so thin, it is safest to treat Adam of Cobsam as a shadowy medieval author rather than a fully documented biographical figure. That mystery is part of the appeal: the work has lasted for centuries, even when the writer’s life has largely disappeared from view.