Close on 225 years after his supposed death by suicide, Bristol's boy-poet Thomas Chatterton remains a fascinating and controversial figure. This challenging collection of essays questions long-held assumptions about Chatterton's life and offers new insights into the young poet's influence on English art and literature.
Seven essays explore various lines of thought. For this preview, we summarise the contents of three of these. Jonathan Barry argues that it was Chatterton's impetuosity and limited social circle, rather than the supposed philistinism of eighteenth-century Bristol (which in fact had a diverse literary scene), that prompted his premature flight to London.

Timothy Mowl argues persuasively that, rather than a proto-Romantic, Chatterton was more a rococo poet living among the eclectic furore of a brash rococo city. He suggests that the provinciality of industrial Bristol encouraged Chatterton's escapist temperament, whereas London killed him.

In 'The Death of Chatterton', Nick Groom, working with the known facts rather than the Romantic myth, shows that in London Chatterton had plenty of literary work, was relatively secure financially and had no reason to commit suicide, concluding that the young poet's death could, anti-climatically, be attributed to an accidental overdose.