Author: Chatterton, Thomas
Biography:
CHATTERTON, Thomas (1752-70: ODNB)
He was the youngest child of Thomas Chatterton, writing master at St. Mary Redcliffe Pile Street school in Bristol and an amateur antiquarian, and his wife Sarah Young. Chatterton was born three months after the death of his father; he had one surviving sibling, Mary. He was educated at Colston’s school in Bristol where he became fascinated by reading and, in particular, by antiquarian books and black letter print. Chatterton began writing verse in about 1764. In 1767 he was apprenticed as a legal scrivener to attorney John Lambert; although the position demanded long hours, there was little for Chatterton to do and he had time to read. His discovery of his father’s collection of ancient manuscripts from the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe was the inspiration for his invention of Thomas Rowley, a fifteenth century monk and writer. Not only did Chatterton write the texts ascribed to the fictitious Rowley but he carefully crafted the “antique” manuscripts from which he claimed to have transcribed Rowley’s works. Increasingly he was also writing other material, including satire and mock-epic, and enjoying a lively social life. He sought the patronage of Horace Walpole but he, with Thomas Gray and William Mason (qq.v.), decried the Rowley manuscripts as forgeries. Angry but not daunted, Chatterton continued writing and publishing in periodicals under a bewildering number of pseudonyms and initials. He eventually freed himself from his apprenticeship to Lambert by threatening suicide and on 24 Apr. 1770 he set off for London where he quickly established himself as a freelance writer. Chatterton lodged in the attic of a bawdy house and at the time of his death he was being treated for venereal disease. He died, aged seventeen, on 24 Aug. 1770 probably as the accidental result of combining arsenic (for his venereal disease) with opium in the form of laudanum. Almost immediately his life and his death became the stuff of an enduring Romantic myth that inspired countless other writers and artists. All of his books listed here were issued posthumously with the exception of his elegy on William Beckford which appeared just before Chatterton’s death. (ODNB 20 Nov. 2023)
Other Names:
- Chatterton
- T. Chatterton