Enlightenment

Thomas Chatterton: Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777)

Like Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) achieved renown (albeit posthumously) as a forger of poetry. Chatterton conceived the pseudo-medieval romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and adopted for himself the pseudonym Thomas Rowley. Controversy began after Chatterton’s death when the poems were published in 1777. Thomas Tyrwhitt who edited the volume believed the works to be genuine but arguments as to their authenticity persisted into the 19th century. Despite Chatterton’s anachronistic use of archaic words and forms, the poems were widely admired by Romantic poets of the succeeding century.

Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century [by Thomas Chatterton, 1768]. 8vo. London, 1777
[L.4.44]