Michael F. Suarez

‘This Necessary Knowledge’: Thomas Chatterton and the Ways of the London Book Trade

Thomas Chatterton was no Emily Dickinson. Like most writers, he did not merely want to write; he wanted to publish. Publication brought financial gain and reputation. Bred in Bristol, arguably the English provincial city with the most advanced commercial print-culture, Chatterton learned early about the business of getting into print.1 He was 15 when his first composition, a forgery, appeared in a local journal. He began corresponding with London booksellers shortly after his 16th birthday, and saw his first works printed in a London periodical just two months later. By the time the cocksure Chatterton came to the capital in late April 1770 to win fame and fortune with his pen, he had published 31 titles in seven different journals, five of which were London publications. He was 17 years old.

A new collection of English recusant manuscript poetry from the late-sixteenth century: extraordinary devotion in the liturgical season of 'ordinary time'

At Yale University, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Librarys James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection has recently acquired a fascinating manuscript of late sixteenth-century Roman Catholic devotional verse in English (Osborn Shelves a30). Following the liturgical year from Trinity Sunday to the feast of Saint Catherine on November 25th, these fifty-eight poems celebrate the solemnities, feasts, and memorials of the Roman liturgical calendar throughout the approximately twenty-six weeks comprising the major portion of ‘ordinary time’. Presumably, this collection would have had a companion volume, now lost, covering the period from Advent to Pentecost which includes the principal solemnities and great seasons of the liturgical year.