ABSTRACT

The ongoing critical fascination with Thomas De Quincey and the burgeoning recognition of the centrality of his writings to the Romantic age and beyond necessitates a critical examination of De Quincey. In this spirit, ten of the top De Quincey scholars in the world have come together in this volume to engage directly with the immense amount of new information to be published on De Quincey in the past two decades. The book features wide-ranging and incisive assessments of De Quincey as essayist, addict, economist, subversive, biographer, autobiographer, aesthete, innovator, hedonist, and much else.

chapter 1|18 pages

‘I Was Worshipped; I Was Sacrificed'

A Passage to Thomas De Quincey

chapter 2|25 pages

‘Mix(ing) a Little with Alien Natures'

Biblical Orientalism in De Quincey

chapter 4|17 pages

‘Earthquake and Eclipse'

Radical Energies and De Quincey's 1821 Confessions

chapter 5|17 pages

De Quincey and Men (of Letters)

chapter 6|23 pages

Wooing the Reader

De Quincey, Wordsworth and Women in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine

chapter 8|22 pages

National Bad Habits

Thomas De Quincey's Geography of Addiction

chapter 9|22 pages

On the Language of the Sublime and the Sublime Nation in De Quincey

Toward a Reading of ‘The English Mail-Coach'

chapter 10|24 pages

Chambers of Horror

De Quincey's ‘Postscript’ to ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’

chapter 11|23 pages

‘A Deafening Menacein Tempestuous Uproars'

De Quincey's 1856 Confessions, The Indian Mutiny, and the Response of Collins and Dickens