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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Thomas Chatterton
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(1752–70) Boy poet, born in Bristol, whose pseudo-medieval poetry was an important part of the early *Romantic movement. At a time when *Ossian was still believed to be genuine, Chatterton invented a 15C priest, Thomas Rowley, whose poems he claimed to have discovered. Coming to London and finding himself alone and unrecognized, he committed suicide in an attic room when still only 17 – a tragic scene later immortalized in one of the best-known Pre-Raphaelite paintings, by Henry Wallis (1856, Tate Gallery).
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