Of all English poets, Thomas Chatterton seemed to his great Romantic successors to most typify a commitment to the life of the imagination. For a variety of reasons, which to a large extent relate to the state of letters in his time, he achieved the status of a myth. The victim of starvation and despair, his suspected suicide in a London garret at the age of eighteen enhanced his social and literary significance to an archetypal level.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Growing Up in a Household of Women Thomas Chatterton was born on November 10, 1752, in Bristol, England. He was the son of a schoolmaster, also named Thomas, a man of an eccentric disposition but with strong musical and poetic abilities and antiquarian interests. His mother, who was widowed four months before Chatterton’s birth, kept the home running with her work as a needlewoman. Chatterton grew up in a household of women—his mother, sister, and paternal grandmother. At an early age, Chatterton was judged to be ‘‘stupid’’ due to his early inability to learn to read. However, at the age of six, he became deeply interested in an illuminated manuscript at Saint Mary Redcliffe Church, after which he did little but read and demonstrate his precocity.

Saint Mary Redcliffe Church Chatterton’s ancestors had been sextons of the Church of Saint Mary in the parish of Redcliff for generations. It was the Church of Saint Mary Redcliffe that became the young Chatterton’s favorite place to spend time. Elsewhere, he was prone to outbursts of rage alternating with tearful episodes. The constant proximity of the old and beautiful church, however, with whose fabric his ancestors had been so closely connected, nurtured his extraordinary sensibility.

Solitary Brooding Yields First Publication at Age Eleven At the age of eight Chatterton was sent to Colston’s charitable foundation, a Hospital School, where his education was geared to the vocational requirements of his community—commerce and law—rather than to encouraging the development of his imagination through classical training. Chatterton began to read voraciously. He frequently haunted local bookshops, and he was equally eager about writing. Chatterton collected all the remnants of parchment he could find and took them to a lumber room that he appropriated for his own use. There, his solitary brooding, combined with the discontents of his daily life, encouraged the young prodigy to express himself in writing. At the age of eleven, he had his first poetry published in the January 8, 1763, edition of Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal.

Suffered Beatings for Poetry At the end of his schooling he was indentured to a local lawyer, John Lambert, as a scrivener, or copy clerk. Upon finding out that he wrote poetry in his spare time, his employer beat him and, tearing up what he had written, forbade him to continue. However, there were other like-minded young men with whom Chatterton gossiped and for whom he produced verse exercises of various kinds. Thomas Phillips, the usher at Colston’s, had been regarded as a remarkable versifier, but Phillips died in 1769; Chatter-ton’s three elegies to Phillips show he had been to some extent a fellow spirit.

Rowley Is Born Chatterton returned to the Church of Saint Mary Redcliff in Bristol for his greatest (and most talked-about) writing efforts. Using documentation he found there, he created fictions based upon the lives of people from the church’s history. The church had been founded in the fifteenth century by William Canning, mayor of Bristol and a romantic figure of enormous wealth and property. Among Canning’s contemporaries had been Thomas Rowley, at one time sheriff of Bristol. In his solitude, Chatterton wrote works that he attributed, upon submission for publication, to Rowley.

With his first successful submission to the local newspaper, Chatterton attracted the attention of William Barrett, a surgeon and local antiquary. Barrett’s encyclopedia-style History of Bristol (1789) was to include much of Chatterton’s ‘‘Rowley’’ material as genuine. Modern readers should keep in mind that the clear distinction between fact and fiction in written works only found its codification with the rise of the novel itself. Histories written prior to the emergence of the novel as a genre often included fanciful material. In this case, Chatterton cunningly offered material that would attract an antiquary and reinforced the forgery with sophisticated critique, also forged, to enhance its supposed authenticity. Not only was none of the Rowley poetry published as Chatterton’s during Chatterton’s lifetime, but his ‘‘friends’’ were among the most adamant after his death in asserting that the boy they had known could not possibly have written the Rowley poems.

Fooling Horace Walpole Chatterton became even more creative to convince his next patrons. The ‘‘Account of the De Berghams from the Norman Conquest to This Time’’ earned him a small sum of money, but his work was soon exposed as a hoax. Chatterton then targeted famous author Horace Walpole. What better ploy than to have Canning send Rowley to catalogue the paintings of the fifteenth century in a journey around Britain in order to whet Walpole’s appetite for unknown artists? Walpole welcomed Chatterton’s opening gambit, a piece titled ‘‘The Rise of Peyncteynge yn Englande, wroten bie T. Rowleie, 1469 for Mastre Canynge.’’ Wal-pole gave courteous encouragement, offering to print them if they had not been printed before.

Chatterton not only sent poems but disclosed the truth of his own situation—that he was the son of a poor widow and wished to be released from his drudgery as an attorney’s apprentice. The obviously modern tone of the specimens Walpole received (particularly of the pastoral poems) and his embarrassment at being tricked and consequently ridiculed made Walpole at first neglect to respond to Chatterton. He then made brusque dismissal of any hopes Chatterton might have had from this particular great man. After Chatterton’s suspected suicide, Walpole was cast in the role of persecutor of the indigent and youthful genius.

One Final Hoax So ripe must the time have seemed for his new life to begin that Chatterton found a way to extricate himself from his apprenticeship. On April 14, 1769, he devised a last will and testament and specified memorials to be placed on the tombs of his ancestors and on his own. His scheme succeeded: the largely fictitious emotions were assumed to be authentic, and Lambert released him from his apprenticeship. Chatterton was free to go to London to make his fortune. He left Bristol on April 17 for the first and last time. He had already written to booksellers and publishers in London, and he visited them promptly on the evening of his arrival.

Writing Opportunities Change From then on, the pace of his life and the hectic qualities of his letter writing increased. He took lodgings with a relative in Shoreditch and there wrote glowing accounts of his fashionable acquaintance and of his influence with London publishers. He had established connections with the editors of the Town and Country Magazine, the Middlesex Journal, and the Freeholder’s Magazine. It is reported, however, that when the government clamped down on their activities and imprisoned the editor of the Freeholder’s Magazine, Chatterton’s market became constricted. Chatterton earned a little money from periodical stories such as ‘‘Letter of Maria Friendless’’ and ‘‘Memoirs of a Sad Dog,’’ both published in Town and Country. About the time Chatterton moved from Shoreditch to the house of Mrs. Angel, a dress maker on Brooke Street, he must have written, or more likely improved, his ‘‘Excelente Balade of Charitie,’’ the only poem of this period written in the Rowleian style. It was not accepted for publication by the Town and Country, which merely printed an acknowledgment of its receipt, having already accepted as much material as it could publish.

Mrs. Angel The sentiments of the rejected poem have long been supposed those of Chatterton himself as his fortunes sank even lower. He wrote to his old Bristol acquaintance William Barrett for support in gaining a position as a ship’s surgeon, but, since Chatterton had no medical training, Barrett could only refuse. The last presents for home were sent with confident and affectionate letters to his mother and sister, the two women who remained the center of his emotional concern. He promised more gifts and future good fortune, but in fact he was being beset by the ironically named Mrs. Angel.

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