Thomas Chatterton Manuscript Project
The African Eclogues
Chatterton's Anti-Slavery Works
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Engraving used with The Death of Nicou in The Poetical Works of Chatterton with a memoir by Frederick Martin : View
Three of Chatterton's works constitute the group known as the African Eclogues :
The 'View' links above will take you to the control page dedicated to each individual work.​
Chatterton's An African Song* which references Narva and Mored, is included above even though it is not listed as an eclogue.
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All of the above eclogues were written & published within the first seven months of 1770.
Last two verses of Chatterton's An African Song
Court and City Magazine July 1770
Analysis of the genesis of Chatterton's African Eclogues
Chatterton's African Eclogues
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Alexander Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge
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by Wylie Sypher : In the PMLA Vol. 54, 1939
An extract from the above:
"Some have credited Coleridge's Kubla Khan with a “magic” lacking to almost every other poem in English. Though more finished in its artistry, Kuhla Khan is, however, no more “magic” than parts of Chatterton's African Eclogues; in fact, as E. H. W. Meyerstein in his excellent Life of Chatterton was apparently the first critic to point out, there are sundry arresting likenesses between these Eclogues and Kuhla Khan. Since the Rowley poet is in his strange “romantic” way similar to Coleridge, is it possible to penetrate the “shaping spirit of imagination” behind the African Eclogues, as Mr. Lowes has penetrated the imagination behind Kuhla Khan? The purpose of this discussion is to show the manifold effects of the Rev. Alexander Catcott's Treatise on the Deluge on three “magic” poems."
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View Wylie Sypher's essay online : View
Chatterton Lecture on Poetry
Thomas Chatterton: four ways of literary terra-forming.
A Lecture by Prof. Nick Groom, 19th May 2022