The poet and forger Thomas Chatterton (1752 70) is known today to have been the author of the Rowley poems, a series of compositions in medieval English. Chatterton claimed to have transcribed them from manuscripts written by a fifteenth-century monk, Thomas Rowley. After Chatterton's tragic early death, however, debate raged about the provenance of the poems. This biography, published in 1789, engages powerfully in that debate. Scholar and cleric George Gregory (1754 1808) makes every effort to defend Chatterton against the accusations of forgery, tackling each objection point by point, not least the question of why eighteenth-century syntax appears in the Rowley poems. Paired with Cottle and Southey's three-volume collection of Chatterton's work (also reissued in this series), this book attests to the growth of his influence and remains relevant to students and scholars of English literature.

Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) was only seventeen when he died of arsenic poisoning. Among his family and friends he was known as a versifier with a fascination for medieval manuscripts, but none suspected the true scope of his work. At eleven, he was already writing poetry, and by the end of his life his love poems, eclogues and forged medieval pieces numbered in the hundreds. Chatterton is best known for the Rowley poems, which he claimed were transcribed from the work of a fifteenth-century monk. Although the precocious skill of his forgeries, once exposed, often went unrecognised by critics, Chatterton's legacy influenced the Romantics for decades after his death. This three-volume collection of his work, edited by Joseph Cottle and Robert Southey, first appeared in 1803. Volume 1 includes his earliest poetry, and a biography by George Gregory (also reissued separately in this series).