Professor of English Joseph Bristow sku-42337532 Book

Oscar Wilde's Chatterton: Literary History, Romanticism, and the Art of Forgery is a hardcover listed under Professor of English Joseph Bristow in All Books (SKU sku-42337532). Joseph Bristow and Rebecca N. Mitchell examine Wilde's fascination with Thomas Chatterton, an eighteenth-century forger who took his life at seventeen.

The book combines a scholarly study with an edition of Wilde's extensive notes on Chatterton, whose work inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, and Victorian artists and authors. Bristow and Mitchell argue that Wilde's "Chatterton" notebook, previously described by scholars as plagiarism, was central to his development as a writer of criticism, drama, fiction, and poetry.

Drawing on archival research and previously undiscovered sources, they trace Chatterton's influence across Wilde's career, including his engagement with Romanticism, plagiarism, and forgery in "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Importance of Being Earnest.

They also examine Chatterton's place in Wilde's personal canon alongside Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.