Book excerpt: Thomas Chatterton was a poet, forger, and adolescent suicide, and the debate over his work was a pivotal episode in the history of eighteenth-century literature. It ultimately established Chatterton as the inspiration for Romantic poets like Blake, Coleridge, and Keats. This book is a major collection of diverse new essays by scholars, critics, and writers like Peter Ackroyd and Richard Holmes. They show the mercurial Chatterton in exciting new contexts, and restore him as a seminal figure in English Literature.