The earliest record of the original manuscript for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight comes from the catalogue of a sixteenth-century lord in Yorkshire, Sir Robert Cotton. The catalogue, given the name MS. Cotton Nero A.X, also contained the poems Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience, presumably written by the same author.
Other major works of early Middle English literature include the Ormulum, Havelock the Dane, and Thomas of Hales's Love Rune. Later works of note are William Langland's Piers Plowman, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, by far the most famous of the Middle English poets.
