Thomas Chatterton and Romantic Culture

Thomas Chatterton wrote poetry, forged medieval manuscripts, and died in tragic and mysterious circumstances - either adolescent suicide or accidental drug overdose. He left reams of original poetry, and a vast and complex archive of medieval works supposedly discovered in a Bristol church. The debate about the authenticity of these 'Rowley' papers was a pivotal episode in the history of eighteenth-century letters that ultimately established Chatterton as the herald of Romanticism and an inspiration for later poets. And yet there has been almost no critical work on this extraordinary and influential writer. This book restores Chatterton as a seminal figure in English literature. It is a major collection of diverse new essays by writers, biographers, critics, and scholars, showing the mercurial Chatterton in new contexts, perpetually challenging the genres of writing: ultimately mixing history, fiction, and myth in a great post-Enlightenment reinvention of the past. As Peter Ackroyd says in his foreword, Thomas Chatterton is 'the one great genius of historical restoration and renewal in this country'.

ISBN 0333725867   DEWEY edition DC21 ISBN13 9780333725863 (What's this?)   Pages 312 Publisher Palgrave Macmillan   Weight (grammes) 585 Imprint Palgrave Macmillan   Published in Basingstoke Format Hardback   Height (mm) 223 Publication date 30 Sep 1999   Width (mm) 143 Writer of foreword Thomas Chatterton, Peter Ackroyd   Spine width (mm) 27 DEWEY 821.6   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		Illustrations
		Abbreviations
		Acknowledgements
		Contributors
		Preface by Peter Ackroyd		1
1		Introduction by Nick Groom		3
Pt. I		Life and Works
2		Unparodying and Forgery: The Augustan Chatterton by Claude Rawson		15
3		The Originality of Chatterton's Art by Georges Lamoine		32
4		'On Tiber's Banks': Chatterton and Post-Colonialism by Carolyn D. Williams		48
5		The Mythical Image: Chatterton, King Arthur, and Heraldry by Inga Bryden		64
6		In Your Face by Timothy Morton		79
7		'This Necessary Knowledge': Thomas Chatterton and the Ways of the London Book Trade by Michael F. Suarez		96
App. I		Works by Chatterton Published in His Own Lifetime		114
App. II		An Analysis of Chatterton's Publications		117
Pt. II		The Rowley Controversy and After
8		Chatterton and the Club by Pat Rogers		121
9		'Truth Sacrifising to the Muses': The Rowley Controversy and the Genesis of the Romantic Chatterton by Maria Grazia Lolla		151
10		Chatterton and Johnson: Authority and Filiation in the 1770s by Paul Baines		172
11		Fragments, Reliques, & MSS: Chatterton and Percy by Nick Groom		188
12		Nostalgic Chatterton: Fictions of Poetic Identity and the Forging of a Self-Taught Tradition by Bridget Keegan		210
13		Chatterton's Poetic Afterlife, 1770-1794: A Context for Coleridge's Monody by David Fairer		228
14		Forging The Poet: Some Early Pictures of Thomas Chatterton by Richard Holmes		253
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