Details
Synopsis
Peter Ackroyd has written a fictionalized version of the life of Thomas Chatterton, a poet who committed suicide in 1770 at the age of 17, and who was immortalized in Henry Wallis's famous 1856 painting of this event. In addition to Chatterton's story, Ackroyd brings the narrative into the 20th century with the discovery of Chatterton's lost manuscripts, in which it is revealed that his suicide was a hoax.
| Size | | Length: | 234 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 12.0 oz |
Industry Reviews
"The greater part of the text is devoted to the modern story, which is not altogether good news for Ackroyd's readers, since his touch is surer in recreating the past than in representing the present."
New York Review of Books - David Lodge (04/14/1988)
"'Chatterton' is a wonderfully vivid book, continuously at home in its many lives....The book is superb."
New York Times Book Review - Denis Donoghue (01/17/1988)
"Something is always happening; the novel accumulates in brief episodes and the reader is kept guessing what happens next....[It is] ingenious and extraordinarily self-sustaining, not to say self-conscious. It presents itself in such a way that it is difficult to pass judgment on it."
Times Literary Supplement - Martin Dodsworth (09/11/1977)
"Peter Ackroyd's fascinating third novel takes off from the conceit that Chatterton's death, like all that was noteworthy in his life, was a fraud. A gaggle of twentieth century would-be sleuths chase after clues; in 1856, George Meredith poses for Henry Wallis's 'Death of Chatterton'; minor characters of Dickensian eccentricity bumble splendidly around; and all the time, the serious questions are What is art? What is truth? A delightful, thought-provoking, intelligent book."
Gehret
|
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
All rights reserved.
