A previously unknown early 19th-century edition of The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer has been identified by University of Otago senior lecturer in English, Dr Simone Marshall.

The university says it has important ramifications internationally for the study of medieval literature.

Dr Marshall says the 1807 edition identifies the poems which were wrongly attributed to Chaucer much earlier than academics had thought.

She says it changes the way academics think about how much people of the 19th century thought about Geoffery Chaucer, who lived between 1320 and 1400 AD.