Elegy on the Death of Chatterton

Elegy on the Death of Chatterton is on the Texas Prescribed Music List for String Orchestra. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was an English poet born in Bristol who ended his own life in London at the age of 17. He was buried in the Shoe Lane Workhouse Cemetery, Holborn, the ground of which was built over in the late 19th Century. His early death had a profound effect on the Romantic Poets including Wordsworth who referred to him as the marvellous boy' and Keats who dedicated his Endymion to him. There is a plaque in London at 36 Brook Street, Holborn, marking the site of the house in whose attic Chatterton committed suicide. The famous 1856 oil painting The Death of Chatterton by Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis hangs today in London's Tate Britain gallery.