Chatterton is a dramma lirico or opera in three acts (four acts in its original 1876 version) by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The libretto was written by the composer himself and is freely adapted from the life of the young English poet from Bristol, Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770). Considered by the romantics as the perfect archetype of the accursed poet, Chatterton became famous for his brilliant pastiches of medieval poetry, which he attributed to an imaginary 15th-century monk whom he called Thomas Rowley. At the age of 18, to escape his misery, he committed suicide in London by taking poison.