Donald S. Taylor · 1978 (Princeton UP; catalogue gives 1979) · PDF · Calibre ID 3327
Resurfaced in Rewarded for the Relics (2026-10-12).
Role in the triad
The eighteenth-century hinge: the market made visible document by document (Barrett, Burgum, Walpole)
Why this book
Taylor traces the Rowleyan documents shifting from free invention to pieces ‘designed to exploit the particular needs and interests of actual or potential patrons’, shows the apparatus (ruled manuscript, glossary from the A entries) as both authentication and tell, and refuses the word ‘forger’.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “Yet the righting of historical error is often not the end of a story, for error itself can be a particularly eloquent sort of evidence if we put the right questions to it.” (p. 4 [PDF 15])
- “When we wish to persuade ourselves of the reality of imagined worlds, of fantasies, or dreams, we thicken the imagining, persuading ourselves, as it were, by sheer weight of detail.” (p. 49 [PDF 60])
- “In the earlier group, literature seems to be a byproduct of fantasy; in the later group, fantasy is used to promote literature.” (p. 52 [PDF 63])
- “Walter Skeat noticed that the Anglo-Saxon words in these arms, thoughtfully glossed for Walpole, were all taken from the A entries in an Anglo-Saxon dictionary.” (p. 67 [PDF 78])
- “I believe both Macpherson & Chatterton, that what they say is ancient is so,” (Blake, quoted p. 5 [PDF 16])
- “Chatterton had studied the tastes of this potential patron to very good effect.” (p. 67 [PDF 78])
Themes
authenticating documents · Barrett · Blake · Catcott · Chatterton · Collingwood · imagined history · invented language · Keats · patronage · Rowley · Skeat · Walpole