Thomas Chatterton: Early Sources and Responses: Enquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems/Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley/a Vindication of the App - Tapa dura

The revival of interest in medieval life and literature during the 18th century led to a fanatical search for antiquarian literary treasures - forgers such as James Macpherson, William Henry Ireland and Thomas Chatterton provided them to their willing and eager patrons. Chatterton wrote on scraps of old parchment and posed it as the work of Thomas Rowley and others.
The publication of Thomas Tyrwhitt's first collection of Rowley poems in 1777 gave rise to a heated literary controversy regarding their authenticity. This is a collection of the major contemporary contributions to this controversy - all of them extremely rare.

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and a Romantic archetype. Grevel Lindrop is the author of five volumes of poems and two prose publications, T"he Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey" and "A Literary Guide to the Lake District."