First published 2004
Thomas Chatterton stands at his garret window in 1770, arsenic powder in his palm. The seventeen-year-old poet has fooled London's literary establishment with medieval verses he claimed to discover but actually wrote himself. Two centuries later, poet Charles Wychwood finds a painting that may be Chatterton's lost self-portrait. Wychwood becomes obsessed with proving the work authentic, but his investigation reveals connections between Chatterton's forgeries and a Victorian painter who also faked historical art. As Wychwood digs deeper, he discovers that literary fraud spans generations, linking him to both Chatterton and the Victorian forger in ways he never expected. The three men share more than artistic ambition. They each struggle with the line between creation and deception, between genius and madness. Wychwood's search for truth about the painting becomes a journey into his own creative demons.
Genres: art, 20th-century, biographical-fiction, 21st-century, deception, art-history, books-about-books, academic
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: deception, obsession, unreliable-narrator
Period: 1770, 19th-century, 20th-century
Audio Cassette · Chivers Sound Library