The Rowley poems
by Thomas Chatterton
Category: Poetry

In 1763, an 11-year-old boy named Thomas Chatterton began publishing mature works of poetry. Before long, he was fooling the literary world by passing his work off as that of a non-existent 15th-century poet named Thomas Rowley—which he did until unmasked by Horace Walpole. Brought up in poverty and without a father, he studied furiously and went on to try and earn a living from his writing. After impressing the likes of the Lord Mayor, William Beckford and the radical leader John Wilkes, he eagerly looked for an outlet in London for his political works, but was unable to make a decent living and, despairing, poisoned himself himself at the age of seventeen. Chatterton had a significant impact on Romantic artists including Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats; with numerous notable poems, plays, and paintings having been dedicated to him since his untimely death. This volume contains Chatterton's controversial collection of poetry by the invented Thomas Rowley, which was not discovered to be a fake until after he died. Contents include: "Editor's Introduction" and "Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written in Bristol". As part of our poetry imprint, Ragged Hand, Read & Co. is republishing this classic collection of poetry now in a new edition complete with John Keats' “Sonnet to Chatterton” (1848).