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Thomas Chatterton ​

Thomas Chatterton (1752 – 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talent influenced a host of Romantic artists. Using several pseudonyms to disguise his youth, he wrote ecologues, lyrics, operas, political essays and satires, both in prose and verse, for the major periodicals of his day. However, Chatterton never earned enough to support himself and, near starvation, committed suicide at age 17.

After his death, Chatterton’s brilliance was recognized by Percy Bysshe Shelley in Adonais , William Wordsworth in “Resolution and Independence“, Samuel Taylor Coleridge in “Monody on the Death of Chatterton“, Dante Gabriel Rossetti in “Five English Poets”, and by John Keats’ in his sonnet “To Chatterton, ” as well as the dedication of his poem Endymion “to the memory of Thomas Chatterton.”