E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Chatterton, Thomas (b. Bristol, November 20th, 1752, d. Holborn, August 25th, 1770).
Wrote various pieces—ascribed by him to one Thomas Rowley—which were first published in a collective form by Thomas Tyrwhitt, in 1777, under the title of “The Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and Others in the Fifteenth Century, with an Introductory Account of the several Pieces, and a Glossary.” This was followed, in 1778, by “Chatterton’s Miscellanies in Prose and Verse,” and in 1784 by a “Supplement to the Miscellanies of Thomas Chatterton.” Of the bitter and protracted controversy that arose upon the question of the authenticity of the Poems, an account is given in Kippis’s “Biographia Britannica,” a list of the principal pamphlets published in the course of the dispute being contained in Lowndes’s “Bibliographer’s Manual” under the heading of “Rowley.” Editions of the Poems were issued in 1803, 1842, 1865, and 1871, but see “Poetical Works by Thomas Chatterton, with Essay on the Rowley Poems,” by Prof. W. Skeat, and “Memoir” by Edward Bell (1875). For Biography, see the “Lives” by Gregory (1789), Davis (1809), Dix (1837), Martin (1865), Wilson (1869), and Masson (1875). For Criticism, see the Essays by Tyrwhitt, Southey, Warton, Campbell, Scott, Masson, Wilson, etc.
