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Selected Poems

Thomas Chatterton

Edited by Grevel Lindop

Cover Picture of Selected Poems
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Categories: 18th Century
Imprint: Fyfield Books
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (96 pages)
(Pub. Apr 2003)
9781857546927
£9.95 £8.96
Digital access available through Exact Editions
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  • Excerpt
  • Author
  • Contents
  • Reviews
  • The Gouler's Requiem

    Mie boolie Entes, adiewe : ne more the Syghte
    Of guilden Merke shalle mete mie joieous Eyne;
    Ne moe the sylver Noble sheenynge bryghte,
    Shalle fylle mie hande wythe weighte to speke ytte fyne;
    Ne moe : Ne Moe : alas, I calle you myne;
    Whyder must you? - ah, whydher moste I goe?
    I kenne not either! Oh mie Emmers dygne.
    To parte wythe you wyll wurche me myckle Woe.
    I must begon, butte where I dare nott telle,
    O Storth unto mie mynde, I fere to Helle!

    Gouler miser; Boolie beloved; Entes coffers; Merke marks; Emmers dygne worthy comforters; Storth death

    'The marvellous boy,
    The sleepless soul that perished in his pride'


    Wordsworth's lines on Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) contributed to a legend that became better known than Chatterton's work itself. His story is moving: a sensitive, unhappy boy, he fell in love with the medieval world and escaped into it from miserable schooling and the drudgery of apprenticeship. He read and then wrote 'medieval' poetry which he passed off as genuine. When the poems he wrote in his own name brought him some success, he went to London to seek his fortune as a writer. After six months' struggle, too proud to admit defeat, starving and alone, he killed himself in his attic room. He was seventeen.

    There is more to Chatterton than the romantic archetype. His poetry was admired by Keats, Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth; as Grevel Lindop says in his introduction, 'Chatterton's work contains in essence the whole of Romanticism'. This selection, with its detailed notes, shows the historical significance and unexpected range of Chatterton's poetry, and also enables the reader to enjoy it for its rich resonance and wonderfully memorable rhythms.
    Table of Contents

    PREFACE - Grevel Lindop



    INTRODUCTION - Grevel Lindop

    I The Poet
    II The Poetry
    III The Technicalities of Rowley
    IV Chatterton's Reputation
    V The Text and Editorial Matter



    ACKNOWLEDGED POEMS



         Apostate Will

    To Horace Walpole

    from Journal 6th

    from Elegy to the Memory of Mr.Thomas Phillips

    The Defence

    A Bacchanalian

    To Miss Hoyland

    from February: An Elegy

    The Art of Puffing

    On the Immortality of the Soul


    ROWLEY POEMS



    from AElla

    An Excelente Balade of Charitie

    from The Parlyamente of Sprytes

    Eclogue the Third

    The World

    'There was a Broder of Orderys Blacke

    'There was a Broder of Orderys White

    The Gouler's Requiem

    Onn Johne a Dalbenie



    NOTES



    APPENDIX A: Chatterton's Last Verses'


    APPENDIX B: Chatterton's Will

    Thomas Chatterton
    Thomas Chatterton was an English Poet whose distinguishingly precoicious career ended with his suicide, aged 17. From the age of 11, he was producing mature work - by nature he was a thoughtful child, tending to sit deep in though for protracted periods. In 1770, in London, after a dissapointing search ... read more
    Grevel Lindop
    GREVEL LINDOP was born in Liverpool and now lives in Manchester, where he was formerly a Professor of English at the Victoria University. His books include A Literary Guide to the Lake District; The Opium Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey and editions of Chatterton, De Quincey and Robert Graves's ... read more
    Praise for Grevel Lindop 'This is a poet who is alert to the human cost and implications of different environments and the ways societies behave in them, able to interrogate what connects and separates us from one another, and yet who never seems to be telling us how clever or well-travelled he is.' - Rory Waterman, TLS 'a fascinating read.'
    William Oxley, Stride Magazine
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