Edward Harry William Meyerstein was a complex man, a writer and a scholar, who was and is highly revered by anyone with an interest in the life and works of Thomas Chatterton.  His A Life of Thomas Chatterton, is viewed as the definitive work on Chatterton and, along with Donald Taylors 'magisterial' two volumes of The Works of Thomas Chatterton, form the bedrock for all Chatterton learning and ongoing research.  

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Wickipedia has the story of his life, which sums him up nicely enough. It shows that he was financially secure and able at a young enough age to start buying and collecting rare books and manuscripts. I recall reading that he would use book dealers, such as Quaritch, to search out anything that interested him.  I believe this is how he was able to obtain the two original hand written manuscripts of John Baker's letters to Thomas Chatterton - see below.

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In my early days researching Chatterton, the works by Meyerstein and Taylor were expensive to buy, and so I had to borrow them from Bristol Library, and I was delighted that I could. Eventually, I managed to find reasonably priced copies, and now have them by my side continually ( well almost continually). 

This is what drove me to photograph Meyerstein's manuscript of his most famous book, which, throughout the literature on Chatterton, is simply called 'Life.'  I should add, to be fair, that the printed copy is not always an easy read, and occasionally sections need to be read a few times to get clarification - but that is probably a personal scholastic failing of my own.   

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It is also worth knowing, if you own a copy of the printed edition, that the Ms. copy is practically word for word the same as the printed edition - in other words nothing new to be discovered, however, I believe that there is another Ms., of the printed edition, which is held at the British Library. ​

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