author
Thomas Chatterton
1752–1770
A brilliant and troubled teenage poet, he became famous for vivid pseudo-medieval verse and for the legend that grew around his short life. Though he died at just seventeen, his work and story helped inspire the Romantic imagination that followed.
1 Audiobook
The Rowley Poems
by Thomas Chatterton
About the author
Born in Bristol on November 20, 1752, Thomas Chatterton showed literary talent very young. He is best known for the so-called Rowley poems, which he presented as the work of a medieval Bristol monk named Thomas Rowley. The poems were not genuinely medieval, but their atmosphere, invention, and energy made them remarkable all the same.
Chatterton moved to London while still in his teens and tried to support himself through writing. His life there was brief and difficult, and he died on August 24, 1770, at only seventeen. The circumstances of his death, together with his precocious talent, turned him into a lasting symbol of the neglected young genius.
Later writers and artists saw in him a forerunner of Romanticism. His poems, literary hoaxes, and intense imagination kept his name alive long after his lifetime, and his story continues to fascinate readers interested in poetry, ambition, and literary myth.