Rowley’s Ghost: A Checklist of Creative Works Inspired by Thomas Chatterton’s Life and Writings

Abstract

This is a lightly annotated summary of material, especially poctry, which responds creatively to Thomas Chatte rton. While Chatterton is central to the marority of items listed, his fleeting presence in poems, novels, etc., is also recorded, though more selectively. Although it is rather fuller than earlier lists, it cannot be exhaustive, so that for example the magaZines for the period 1782- 1800 would rewa rd further patient searching. To keep within reasonable limits it concentrates on work which seems overtly fictional and imaginative, though one recognizes that Chatterton is a figure who attracts storytellers of all kinds. It might be argued, indeed, that even such notorious fabricatiOIlS as the 'inq uest report' on Chatterton, or his 'secret reburial' at 5t Mary Redcli He, arc a kind of creative response, involving (like the Rowley project itself) ingenious impostures, and the creation of narra tive and mythiC structures

Then Aradobo began, ‘In the first place I think, I think in the first place that Chatterton was clever at Fissic, Follogy, Pistinology, Aridology, Arography, Transmography, Phizography, Hogamy, Hatomy, & hall that, but, in the first place, he eat wery little, wickly — that is, he slept very little, which he brought into a consumsion; & what was that he took? Fissic or somethink, — & so died!’

William Blake, ‘An Island in the Moon’