The revival of interest in mediaeval life and literature during the 18th century, led to a fanatical search for antiquarian literary treasures. Where there was such a strong demand, literary forgers and impostors such as James Macpherson, William Henry Ireland and Thomas Chatterton provided them to their willing and eager patrons. Chatterton was born to poverty in Bristol in 1752 and died in poverty in London in 1770. As a child, he began writing assured verse before indulging in the production of the Rowley Poems, imitation mediaeval English poetry. He wrote on scraps of old parchment and...

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) has been known for his relationships with the Romantics, his forgery of Medieval texts, and for his early suicide. This collection aims in part to draw attention to his lyrics and satires and not only the biographical details of his life and social milieu.

Wordsworth's lines on Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) contributed to a legend that became better known than Chatterton's work itself. His story is moving: a sensitive, unhappy boy, he fell in love with the medieval world and escaped into it from miserable schooling and the drudgery of apprenticeship. He read and then wrote medieval poetry which he passed off as genuine. When the poems he wrote in his own name brought him some success, he went to London to seek his fortune as a writer. After six months' struggle, too proud to admit defeat, starving and alone, he killed himself in his attic room....

"The Rowley Poems" from Thomas Chatterton. English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry (1752-1770).