Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

Book Overview

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), apparently a suicide at 18, posthumously astonished literary England when he was revealed as the author of a sequence of famous and influential "medieval" poems he... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802100414
• ISBN13: 9780802100412
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 23.4" x 15.5" x 15.5"

Customer Reviews

Enthralling!

I won't repeat the plot outlines others have given; I just want to say that Chatterton is entertaining, suspenseful and delightful. Peter Ackroyd skillfully weaves his three stories together, but more important, Ackroyd's characters are well-drawn and memorable. Ackroyd's writing is brilliant.

Mimesis...and all that is linked to it...

What first lured me to this book is my great affliciton towards Keats and the eighteenth century at particular...So I flipped a few pages and noticed rather unusual manner of conversationa between the owner of antique shop and his wife. I had to see what was it all about. Thomas Chatterton supposedly killed himself by arsen in a dusty attic room, still not being eighteen years old. Artistic life that could soar to great hights was rudely interrupted. But what if? What if Chatterton didn't commit suicide, and he continued to live on? Wouldn't the be the greatest victory of one of the greatest plagiators in history? With these questions we start browsing trough layers of meaning in this book. Ackroyd is familliar with questions that troubled litteral criticism from its begginnings. Plato was first to attack painters, considering their work just an image of an image, and thus unworthy. But isn't the art itself constant upgrading of images that were before? If someone finished Vergiliuses Aeneas would that one be considered an artist or a mere follower? Where is the truth in art and where lies the beauty? Leading the lives of his characters trough series of bizzare coincidences Ackroyd neglects development of mere ficiton and focuses himself on finer points. Old lady, renowned author, whose artistic existance begun as she discovered long forgotten volumes of some 19th century author...painting portraying Chatterton that was painted on numerous different paintings under it...apprentice who is continuing work of his long dead master under his name...those are all the variations of the fundamental questions that we think of when we think of art... If you feel even a bit intrigued by what I have written, read this book, and you will not regret it...

A Literary Daisy Chain

Did Thomas Chatterton, one of the great forger/poets of the 18th century, die of an overdose of laudanum in 1770? Or did he fake his own death and continue merrily publishing work under the names of recently deceased poets? When novelist George Meredith posed as Chatterton in Henry Wallace's painting "The Death of Chatterton," is it true that the painter made off with his oblivious model's wife?In the present day, were the papers found by poetaster Charles Wychwood in Bristol really the confessions of Chatterton written in his own hand? And what about that painting of Chatterton as a middle-aged man? (He was supposedly 17 when he died.)Will literary "resurrectionist" Harriet Scrope succeed in taking Wychwood's work on Chatterton and passing it off as her own, just as Stewart Merk merrily signed the dead painter Seymour's name to his own work?Why am I asking so many questions?Because there are no answers. That's all right, though, because the questions are great; and they just keep on coming. If you read this book, you will sink deep into a morass of counterfeiting, fraud, and outright fakery. Be prepared to be bamboozled ... and entertained.

A contemplative novel on the "life" of the poet Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton was a real 18th-century poet. As a teenager he invented a 15th-century poet, Thomas Rowley and wrote poems in an appropriately archaic style. As a young man he went off to London, wrote poems and short stories, but could not sell enough of his work to make a living and committed suicide by eating arsenic. The poems of Rowley were collected and published after Chatterton's death, but it was not until the third edition that it was revealed the poems were entirely Chatterton's invention and his short and tragic life was embraced by the Romantics: Keats wrote a sonnet to Chatterton, Wordsworth used him in a poem, and he was the subject of Oscar Wilde's last lecture. It is not surprising that Peter Ackroyd would be interesting in writing a novel about Chatterton's life, since the author has long been interested in masks, impersonation, and other ways of presenting a public pretense. Consequently, this is not a historical novel, although it deals with real people and real times. After all, little is really known about Chatterton beyond his poems. Obviously dissatisfied with the time and place of his birth, Chatterton creates Rowley as a way of improving his lot in life, or, at least, that is clearly his intention. But in the real world Chatterton cannot function. He takes pride in writing political satires that attack everyone and everything, but in failing to have convictions and a particular point of view, he reveals that in presenting other identities he has lost his true one. In this regard and in this novel, however, he is clearly not alone. "Chatterton" is clearly not a conventional historical novel is that Ackroyd repeatedly plays with chronology. He is more interested in comparing and contrasting events than he is in sequencing them appropriately. There are four stories intertwined in this novel. Charles Wychwood is a contemporary figure, but also a failed and doomed poet, who is intrigued by a portrait which may or may not be of Chatterton. Since the painting is dated 1802, over three decades after Chatterton's suicide, it may or may not be real, but if it is, it raises the question of whether Chatterton really committed suicide in 1770. Could that have been but another instance of transformation and a means of adopting a new identity? In contrast there is Harriet Scrope, a popular novelist who has engaged in fakery and plagiarism her entire literary career and who is now trying to write her memoirs. She has a friend, Sarah Tilt, who is an art historian writing a book about death paintings and once again we have a painting whose authenticity raises interesting questions. This leads us to George Meredith, a poet who was used by the painter Wallis as the model for his "Death of Chatterton" painting. In one of those true stories that reads like bad soap opera, the painter ran off with Mrs. Meredith, only to abandon her after she became pregnant. Consequently, Meredith becomes susceptible to the romantic traged

Fascinating perspective on art, truth and reality

Peter Ackroyd's "Chatterton" was shortlisted for the Booker Prize award in 1987. It didn't win and remains a largely forgotten gem, being seldom if ever included in anybody's reading list today. The subject is an enquiry into the suspicious circumstances of the early and untimely death of 18th Century forger-poet, Thomas Chatterton by modern day poet Charles Wychwood and novelist Harriet Scrope. Cleverly structured around three separate plots and casts of characters, the reader is invited to wander into the past through a maze of speculative events spanning three centuries, which all come together neatly in the denouement. The novel raises several complex issues on art, truth and reality. Is reality fact for the unimaginative ? Does the poet not through his art create reality rather than merely describe it ? Does reality exist other than the representation or depiction of it ? Is imitation hedonistic and therefore worthless and untrue ? "Chatterton" poses these questions and more in a "whodunnit" style novel that is both witty and clever in its execution. Ackroyd's characters twitter rather than speak but not incongruously considering the context. Some readers might find "Chatterton" a bit of a curio today. The subject matter isn't exactly topical but the issues it raises are timeless and fascinating. A wonderfully entertaining and thought provoking book. Highly recommended.