Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

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 claimed to have discovered. An authentic talent as well as a literary counterfeiter, he is the guiding spirit of Peter Ackroyd's brilliant novel. In today's London, a young poet and an elderly novelist engage the mystery of Chatterton by trying to decode the clues found in an old manuscript, only to discover that their investigation discloses other riddles for which there are no solutions. Chatterton is at once a hilariously witty comedy; a thoughtful and dramatic exploration of the deepest issues of authenticity in both life and art; and a subtle and touching story of failed lives, parental love, doomed marriages, and erotic passions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802134806
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/12/1996
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.13(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

With this inventive, larky novel, British author Ackroyd's (Hawksmoor) reputation here should be enhanced. Though the characters at first seem to be excessively eccentric, Dickensian to a fault, eventually they become credible as an ingenious plot fuses their lives. Revolving around the eponymous English poet who committed suicide in 1770 when he was 18, the story begins in modern-day London where another impoverished poet, Charles Wynchwood, discovers a painting that appears to depict Chatterton at an age older than he was when he died.

Intrigued, Charles travels to Bristol, Chatterton's birthplace, where he acquires a manuscript that suggests that Chatterton faked his own death and continued to write poetry that was attributed to Cowper, Grey and Blake, among others. Meanwhile, elderly novelist Harriet Scrope employs Charles to help her write her memoirs, which she hopes will not reveal the fact that her novels have all been plagiarized from obscure authors. Simultaneously, the owners of an art gallery where Charles's wife Vivien works are made aware that paintings they have sold are actually fakes. As Charles's life begins more and more to resemble Chatterton's, whom we meet in flashback, Ackroyd unrolls further surprises, capturing the reader in a spiraling series of events, all of which relate to the nature of truth and reality, and the role of art in assuring immortality.

Manifestly clever, darkly humorous (although sometimes overdone: the poet Charles eats the pages of books), increasingly suspenseful, sometimes lyrical (as befits its subject), cunningly complex.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A bestseller in Britain, Chatterton is the latest of Ackroyd's fictional games with figures from Britain's literary past. The plot centers around the discovery by Charles Wychwood, an aspiring poet, of an old manuscript that he believes to have been written by Thomas Chatterton, the 18th-century English poet who committed suicide at 18. Or did he? Ackroyd tantalizingly explores the themes of reality and illusion, truth and falsity, mortality and immortality, and the curious and inexplicable ways in which past, present, and future are entwined. An intriguing plot, laced with mystery and a hint of possession (a favorite subject of Ackroyd's), combines with a gallery of eccentric characters and some witty dialogue to produce this skillful, engaging, thought-provoking novel. -- Bryan Aubrey, Fairfield, Iowa

Library Journal