Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

Excerpt from New Facts Relating to the Chatterton Family: Gathered From Manuscript Entries in a "History of the Bible" Which Once Belonged to the Parents of Thomas Chatterton the Poet, and From Parish Registers The particulars not to be found in the biographies, which Mr. Taylor contends are afforded by the inscriptions in this family Bible, may, therefore, be reduced to two, viz., that the maiden name of the poet's mother was Young, information certainly not in the biographies, and that the poet had a brother, and that brother was christened by the suggestive names of Giles Malpas, a circum stance certainly over-looked by all investigators. Before either of these data can be embodied in future biographies, however, some more satisfactory evidence of their authenticity must be produced. This hitherto unknown boy, it should be noticed, was born in the same year as Mary Chatterton's birth really took place. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In Oscar Wilde's Chatterton, Joseph Bristow and Rebecca N. Mitchell explore Wilde's fascination with the eighteenth-century forger Thomas Chatterton, who tragically took his life at the age of seventeen. This innovative study combines a scholarly monograph with a textual edition of the extensive notes that Wilde took on the brilliant forger who inspired not only Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats but also Victorian artists and authors. Bristow and Mitchell argue that Wilde's substantial “Chatterton” notebook, which previous scholars have deemed a work of plagiarism, is central to his development as a gifted writer of criticism, drama, fiction, and poetry. This volume, which covers the whole span of Wilde's career, reveals that his research on Chatterton informs his deepest engagements with Romanticism, plagiarism, and forgery, especially in later works such as “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,”The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Grounded in painstaking archival research that draws on previously undiscovered sources,Oscar Wilde's Chatterton explains why, in Wilde's personal canon of great writers (which included such figures as Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti), Chatterton stood as an equal in this most distinguished company.

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