By the notorious Bristol poet and forger
[CHATTERTON, Thomas.] Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and others, in the fifteenth century; the greatest part now first published from the most authentic copies, with an engraved specimen of one of the MSS. To which are added, a preface, an introductory account of the several pieces, and a glossary. London: Printed for T. Payne and Son, at the Mews-Gate. 1777.
8vo. 20th-century half tan calf over marbled paper boards, flat spine ruled in compartments with gilt centres and blue labels lettered in gilt, all edges speckled red; pp. xxvii, [1 (blank)], 307, [1 (blank)], with one engraved plate after the "original manuscript", as called for; a very handsome copy with a gentle patina and slight uniform fading to spine, internally very fresh with unavoidable light toning, endpapers slightly extruding from book block.
First edition, with the second state of C4, as usual, which is a cancel which omits the phrase "and were probably composed by him".
Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was an extraordinary literary prodigy, political writer, and forger who, bearing in mind his short life, achieved great notoriety and became an influence on the Romantic poets and artists. By the age of eleven, Chatterton had become a contributor to the Bristol Journal under the editorship of Felix Farley. He applied himself so assiduously to his studies that he was soon producing mature work which he claimed to be the recently discovered writings of an imaginary fifteenth-century monk and poet, Thomas Rowley.
He soon began working alongside antiquaries such as William Barrett, providing transcripts of Rowley's works for their investigations and, in 1769, sent examples of Rowley's poetry to Horace Walpole who offered to print them if they were unknown, until he discovered that Chatterton was only sixteen. His suspicions were raised and he snubbed him.
Turning his attention to political writings for journals Chatterton assumed the pen name "Junius" and launched a serious of damaging diatribes against figures of standing, including Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Princess of Wales, before fleeing to London. His nine weeks there were an outpouring of eclogues, lyrics, operas and satires in prose and verse which received very little financial reimbursement and he quickly became destitute, apparently committing suicide by arsenic poisoning in his garret in Brook Street at the age of just seventeen years and nine months (see Henry Wallis’s painting The Death of Chatterton).
By the time this posthumous collection of the Rowley poems appeared, the literati had already reached a consensus: they were forgeries. The editor, Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786), "sensationally recanted his faith in [the poems]" shortly after their publication (ODNB).
ESTC T42675; Freeman, Bibliotheca Fictiva (2nd edition) 415.
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