Historicized fiction and

literary archaeology in
Peter Ackroyds novels

 Peter Ackroyd,

born 5 October
1949, is an English biographer,
novelist and critic with a particular
interest in the history and culture of
London.
Ackroyd was born in London and
raised on a council estate in East
Acton by his single mother in a
strict roman catholic house. He first
knew that he was gay when he was
seven. He was educated at St.
Benedicts, Ealing, and at Clare
College, Cambridge, from which he
graduated with a double first in
English literature. In 1972, he was
a mellon fellow at Yale University.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature in 1984 and
appointed a Commander of the Order
of the British Empire in 2003.

The author

The writing style

Peter Ackroyd is considered to be a lead practitioner of the british art of
historiographic metafiction (an experimental, postmodern technique that blurs
distinctions between imagination and historical fact), building his reputation
upon a number of challenging novels and literary biographies, still growing to
this date, that highlight the interplay of historical time, literary influence, and the
problem of a fixed authorship. His literary belief is that writers find their true
voice through emulation of the past writers, suggesting that writing doesnt rise
from life experiences, but from the writing that has preceded it. In novels such
as The Great Fire of London(1982), Hawksmoor(1985), Chatterton(1987), and
others, he celebrates the english culture by merging its facts with his fiction.

It is in The Great Fire of London that Ackroyd first began to practice the

merging of fact and imagination, traversing time through characters and plot. The
story revolves around a film director, Spenser Spender, who is trying to adapt
Charles Dickens Little Dorrit to the big screen, destroying
his marriage in the process. A gay Cambridge don
named Rowan Phillips comes into play, being
enlisted to write the screenplay. He is infatuated
with Timothy, whose girlfriend Audrey is on the
verge of a nervous breakdown, thus identifiying
herself with the character of Little Dorrit. Arthur, a
convict incarcerated at the prison near the set of
the film, relieves his delusional obsession based on
a Little Dorrit-like character, wich had led to his
imprisonment for the murder of a young girl.
As the film production gets underway, the lives
of the main characters converge until they coincide
at a latter-day conflagration at the Marshalsea
Prison, Dickens location of the original novel.

The Great Fire of London by an unknown painter, depicting the fire as it

would have appeared on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666 from a
boat in the vicinity of Tower of Wharf. The Tower of London is on the right
and London Bridge on the left, with St Pauls Cathedral in the distance,
surrounded by the tallest flames.

 Hawksmoor is one of the most successful examples of

Ackryods literary approach. It is a bold and structurally

innovative novel that transcends time, place, and even
characters in a plot set between the eighteenth and twentieth
centuries. Historically, it is known that Nicholas Hawksmoor
designed several well-known churches in London and lived a
comfortable and cultured life. In the book, however, he
becomes the architect Nicholas Dyer, a satanist who builds
seven churches in the 18th century London for which he
needs human sacrifices, and also a 1980s detective,
Nicholas Hawksmoor, who investigates the murders
committed in the same churches. The evil Dyer sacrificed an
innocent young boy on the foundation of every church he
created, and the modern murders appear to be connected to
the earlier ones.
The novel illustrates the similarities between the two
protagonists and examines the universal themes of death
and regeneration. It has been praised as Peter Ackroyd's
best novel up to now and an example of postmodernism.

Ackroyd uses historical characters, sites and occurrences in his book.

Nicholas Dyer, the architect of the seven churches, is modelled on Nicholas
Hawksmoor but doesn't share his death date (Dyer disappears in 1715,
Hawksmoor died in 1736). As said in the novel, the commission for building
fifty new churches, which had been established by an Act of Parliament in
1711, commissioned Hawksmoor to build six churches, all of which are dealt
with in the novel.
To the left is Christ
Church Spitalfields,
and to the right, Sir
Christopher Wren
who also makes an
appearance in the
book as Dyers
mentor.

 Ackroyds Chatterton

assumes that Thomas

Chatterton, the famed eighteenth century faker of
medieval texts, did not commit suicide at age
seventeen, rather he faked his own death and
survived to continue his mischievous fraud of
producing antique manuscripts. In todays
London, a young poet and an elderly female
novelist engage the mystery of Chatterton by
trying to decode the clues found in an old
manuscript, only to discover that their
investigation reveals other riddles for which there
are no solutions. They are not alone in their
quest: the mystery is also being revived in an
earlier age, as in the mid-nineteenth century
Henry Wallis paints his celebrated portrait of
Chatterton lying dead in an attic room. Then
young Chatterton himself steps forward with the
surprising story of his final days.

 Ackroyd plays with the ideas of fraud and plagiarism, littering the plot with

deceptions at every turn. Chatterton is at once a hilariously witty comedy; a

thoughtful and dramatic exploration of the deepest issues of authenticity in both
life and art; and a subtle and touching story of failed lives, parental love, doomed
marriages, and erotic passions.

The real Thomas Chatterton

Although fatherless and raised in poverty, he was an exceptionally studious child,
publishing mature work by the age of eleven. He was able to pass of his work as an
imaginary 15th-century poet called Thomas Rowley, mainly because few people at
the time were familiar with medieval poetry, though he was denounced by Horace
Walpole. At seventeen, he sought outlets for his political writings in London, having
impressed the Lord Mayor, William Beckford, and the radical leader John Wilkes, but
his earnings were not enough to keep him, and he poisoned himself in despair.

The Death of Chatterton, 1856, byHenry Wallis

Conclusion
Considered a highly creative writer, Ackroyd's work is both admired and
maligned by critics, evidence of his reputation as a literary experimenter.
Ackroyd's work is difficult to classify, perhaps because the author himself is
reluctant to distinguish among genres. Most of his work resides in the realm
of historiographic. His novels explore the convergence of past and present
time, and human lives associated with a place through successive centuries.
In both his fiction and non-fiction writing, Peter Ackroyd places a particular
emphasis on exploring the city of London, its history, literature, culture and
people. He often does this through depicting the city's writers and artists as
either fictional characters or biographical subjects. Consequently, Ackroyd is
often defined as a London writer.

 Bibliography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ackroyd
https://www.enotes.com/topics/peter-ackroyd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawksmoor_(novel)
http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=Chatterton
https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/peter-ackroyd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton
Source of images: Google search engine.