In the “Classics of the Genre” column, philosopher and philologist Elena Khaltrin-Khalturina reflects on the personal and literary fate of Thomas Chatterton (1752 – 1770). The researcher finds objective reasons for the flourishing of his mystifying “parexcellence” gift: “The impulse to create a personal myth was unusually strong in Western European literature of the second half of the 18th – first half of the 19th centuries. The craving for myth-making was most clearly embodied in Chatterton’s hoaxes - in the creation of the “Rowleyan Cycle,” allegedly written from the pen of the poet-monk Thomas Rowley in the 15th century.