Larry Dean Benson (1929–2015) was a professor of medieval literature at Harvard University.[1][2] After an undergraduate degree at Arizona State University and a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, he taught at Harvard for 45 years, retiring in 1998.[3] A scholar of Old and Middle English literature, he is best known as the general editor of the Riverside Chaucer, the authoritative modern edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer.[4]