Thomas Chatterton
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Thomas Chatterton was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
The Death of Chatterton, 1856, by Henry Wallis (Tate Britain, London)
Thomas Chatterton's Birthplace Home and Commemorative Plaque, Bristol
The wall at the right of the house where Chatterton was raised is that of the c. 1739 school where Chatterton's father was master. The school was demolished in 1939 to widen Pile Street into Redcliff Way, but the façade was rebuilt on the line of the former back wall.
Chatterton's Holiday Afternoon engraved by William Ridgway, after W.B. Morris, pub. 1875
The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century (1774-1781) by Thomas Warton was a pioneering and influential literary history. Only three full volumes were ever published, going as far as Queen Elizabeth's reign, but their account of English poetry in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance was unrivalled for many years, and played a part in steering British literary taste towards Romanticism. It is generally acknowledged to be the first narrative English literary history.
