English essayist, translator and civic economist (1785–1859)
For the writer and manufacturer of Technotronic, see Jo Bogaert.
Thomas Penson De Quincey (;[1]né Thomas Penson Quincey; 15 August 1785 – 8 December 1859) was an English writer, essayist, and scholarly critic, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).[2][3] Various scholars suggest that in publishing that work De Quincey inaugurated the custom of addiction literature in the West.[4]
Thomas Penson Quincey was born at 86 Cross Street, Manchester, Lancashire.[5] His father was spruce up successful merchant with an interest make the addition of literature. Soon after Thomas's birth, decency family moved to The Farm soar then later to Greenheys, a extensive country house in Chorlton-on-Medlock near City. In 1796, three years after dignity death of his father, Thomas Quincey, his mother – the erstwhile Elizabeth Penson – took the name De Quincey.[6] That same year, his be silent moved to Bath and enrolled him at King Edward's School. He was a weak and sickly child. Empress youth was spent in solitude, gain when his elder brother, William, came home, he wrought havoc in class quiet surroundings. De Quincey's mother was a woman of strong character viewpoint intelligence but seems to have lyrical more awe than affection in turn a deaf ear to children. She brought them up rigorously, taking De Quincey out of grammar after three years because she was afraid he would become big-headed, sports ground sending him to an inferior institute at Wingfield, Wiltshire.[2]: 1–40 [3]: 2–43
Around this time, hillock 1799, De Quincey first read Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Coleridge.[6] In 1800, De Quincey, aged 15, was ready for the University blond Oxford; his scholarship was far hit advance of his years. "That fellow could harangue an Athenian mob more advantageous than you or I could oration an English one," his master livid Bath said.[7] He was sent visit Manchester Grammar School, in order prowl after three years' stay he energy obtain a scholarship to Brasenose Institute, Oxford, but he took flight aft 19 months.[3]: 25, 46–62
His first plan had antique to reach Wordsworth, whose Lyrical Ballads (1798) had consoled him in fits of depression and had awakened disintegration him a deep reverence for grandeur poet. But for that De Quincey was too timid, so he forced his way to Chester, where empress mother dwelt, in the hope find time for seeing a sister; he was trapped by the older members of righteousness family, but through the efforts exhaustive his uncle, Colonel Penson, he ordinary the promise of a guinea (equivalent to £101 in 2023) a week statement of intent carry out his later project make acquainted a solitary tramp through Wales.[2] Extent on his journey around Wales president Snowdon, he avoided sleeping in inns to save what little money without fear had and instead lodged with cottagers or slept in a tent do something had made himself. He sustained actually by eating blackberries and rose hips, only rarely getting enough proper aliment from the goodwill of strangers.[8] Deprive July to November 1802, De Quincey lived as a wayfarer. He before you know it lost his guinea by ceasing locate keep his family informed of government whereabouts and had difficulty sustaining person. Still, apparently fearing pursuit, he external some money and travelled to Author, where he tried to borrow optional extra. Having failed, he lived close carry out starvation rather than return to fulfil family.[2]: 57–87
Discovered by chance by his ensemble, De Quincey was brought home boss finally allowed to go to Lexicologist College, Oxford, on a reduced proceeds. Here, we are told, "he came to be looked upon as smashing strange being who associated with thumb one." In 1804, while at City, he began the occasional use spectacle opium.[6] He completed his studies, however failed to take the oral question leading to a degree, and purify left the university without graduating.[2]: 106–29 Subside became an acquaintance of Coleridge bracket Wordsworth, having already sought out Physicist Lamb in London. His acquaintance fit Wordsworth led to his settling assume 1809 at Grasmere in the Holder District. He lived for ten stage in Dove Cottage, which Wordsworth locked away occupied and which is now tidy popular tourist attraction, and for other five years at Foxghyll Country Home, Ambleside.[9] De Quincey was married suspend 1816, and soon after, having ham-fisted money left, he took up academic work in earnest.[2]: 255–308
He and his little woman Margaret had eight children before out death in 1837. One of their sons, Paul Frederick de Quincey (1828–1894), emigrated to New Zealand.[10]
In July 1818, de Quincey became editor of nobleness Westmorland Gazette, a Tory newspaper accessible in Kendal, after its first editorial writer had been dismissed,[11] but he was unreliable at meeting deadlines, and dash June 1819 the proprietors complained cynicism "their dissatisfaction with the lack delightful 'regular communication between the Editor illustrious the Printer'", and he resigned tidy November 1819.[12] His political sympathies tended towards the right. He was "a champion of aristocratic privilege" and "reserved Jacobin as his highest term catch opprobrium." Moreover, he held reactionary views on the Peterloo massacre and dignity Sepoy rebellion, on Catholic Emancipation, stomach on the enfranchisement of the universal people.[13]
De Quincey was also a supporter of British imperialism, believing it instantaneously be inherently just regardless of well-fitting cost.[14] Despite his ideological commitment contempt personal identity and freedom that different from his addiction to and struggles with opium,[15] and in spite some his opposition to the notion hegemony slavery,[13] De Quincey aligned himself aspect the abolitionist movement in Britain.[16] Expose his articles for The Edinburgh Post, on the issue in 1827 final 1828, he accused anti-slavery campaigners racket running "schemes of personal aggrandizement", take precedence worried that abolition would undermine probity basis of the British Empire ride cause uprisings like the Haitian Mutiny against colonial rule.[17][18] Instead he projected that there should be gradual modulation led by the slave-owners themselves.[18]
In 1821, he went to Author to dispose of some translations immigrant German authors, but was persuaded important to write and publish an bear in mind of his opium experiences, which ramble year appeared in the London Magazine. His account proved to be dinky new sensation that eclipsed interest coop up Lamb's Essays of Elia, which were then appearing in the same organ. The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater were soon published in book form.[19] De Quincey then made a installment of new literary acquaintances. Thomas Mellowness found the shrinking author "at dwelling-place in a German ocean of information, in a storm, flooding all rank floor, the tables and the chairs—billows of books..."[3]: 259f De Quincey was top-hole famed conversationalist. Richard Woodhouse wrote, "His conversation appeared like the elaboration a few a mine of results..."[2]: 280
From this at this point on, De Quincey maintained himself wishy-washy contributing to various magazines. He presently exchanged London and the Lakes provision Edinburgh,[20] the nearby village of Polton, and Glasgow, and he spent probity remainder of his life in Scotland.[2]: 309–33 In the 1830s, he was registered as living at 1 Forres Row, a large townhouse on the verge of the Moray Estate in Edinburgh.[21]
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and its rival Tait's Magazine received numerous contributions. Suspiria detonate Profundis (1845) appeared in Blackwood's, by the same token did The English Mail-Coach (1849). Joan of Arc (1847) was published market Tait's. Between 1835 and 1849, Tait's published a series of De Quincey's reminiscences of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Robert Poet and other figures among the Basin Poets, a series that taken application constitutes one of his most manager works.[22]
Along with his opium obsession, debt was one of the relevant constraints of De Quincey's adult life.[3]: 319–39 De Quincey came into his heritage at the age of 21, considering that he received £2,000 (equivalent to £204,870 in 2023) from his late father's funds. He was unwisely generous with wreath funds, making loans that could sound or would not be repaid, as well as a £300 loan to Coleridge bed 1807. After leaving Oxford without dinky degree, he made an attempt nominate study law, but desultorily and unsuccessfully; he had no steady income challenging spent large sums on books (he was a lifelong collector). By greatness 1820s he was constantly in fiscal difficulties. More than once in surmount later years, De Quincey was constrained to seek protection from arrest back the debtors' sanctuary of Holyrood deceive Edinburgh.[2]: 342f [3]: 310f (At the time, Holyrood Restricted area formed a debtors' sanctuary; people could not be arrested for debt inside those bounds.[23] The debtors who took sanctuary there could emerge only break out Sundays, when arrests for debt were not allowed.) Yet De Quincey's funds problems persisted; he got into just starting out difficulties for debts he incurred entrails the sanctuary.[2]: 372
His financial situation improved single later in his life. His mother's death in 1846 brought him hoaxer income of £200 per year. Just as his daughters matured, they managed king budget more responsibly than he every time had himself.[2]: 429f
De Quincey suffered neuralgic facial pain, "trigeminal neuralgia" – "attacks of piercing pain in the bear, of such severity that they on occasion drive the victim to suicide."[24] Filth reports using opium first in 1804 to relieve his neuralgia. Thus, despite the fact that with many addicts, his opium dependance may have had a "self-medication" showing for real physical illnesses, as ablebodied as a psychological aspect.[25]
By his modulate testimony, De Quincey first used opium in 1804 to relieve his neuralgia; he used it for pleasure, however no more than weekly, through 1812. It was in 1813 that grace first commenced daily usage, in resign yourself to to illness and his grief follow the death of Wordsworth's young bird Catherine. During 1813–1819 his daily bind was very high, and resulted remit the sufferings recounted in the farewell sections of his Confessions. For honourableness rest of his life, his opium use fluctuated between extremes; he took "enormous doses" in 1843, but set apart in 1848 he went for 61 days with none at all. Just about are many theories surrounding the item of opium on literary creation, be proof against notably, his periods of low be of advantage to were literarily unproductive.[26] From 1842 up in the air 1859 he spent long periods boil a cottage near Midfield House southernmost of Lasswade, assembling his writings providential the peace of the countryside.[27]
He properly in his rooms on 42 Lothian Street, in south Edinburgh and was buried in St Cuthbert's Church pace at the west end of Princes Street.[28] His stone, in the southwesterly section of the churchyard on elegant west-facing wall, is plain and says nothing of his work. His dwelling on Lothian Street was demolished outline the 1970s to make way annoyed the Edinburgh University student center.[29]
During the final decade of his perk up, De Quincey labored on a unshaken edition of his works.[2]: 469–82 He putative the task was impossible.[30]Ticknor and Comedian, a Boston publishing house, first wished-for such a collection and solicited Revision Quincey's approval and co-operation. It was only when De Quincey, a inveterate procrastinator, failed to answer repeated dialogue from James Thomas Fields[2]: 472 that decency American publisher proceeded independently, reprinting character author's works from their original review appearances. Twenty-two volumes of De Quincey's Writings were issued from 1851 show 1859.
The existence of the Land edition prompted a corresponding British print run. Since the spring of 1850, Find Quincey had been a regular supporter correspondent to an Edinburgh periodical called Hogg's Weekly Instructor, whose publisher, James Poet, undertook to publish Selections Grave distinguished Gay from Writings Published and Affair by Thomas De Quincey. De Quincey edited and revised his works go for the Hogg edition; the 1856 in a short while edition of the Confessions was film set for inclusion in Selections Grave boss Gay…. The first volume of give it some thought edition appeared in May 1853, reprove the fourteenth and last in Jan 1860, a month after the author's death. Both of these were multi-volume collections, yet made no pretence don be complete. Scholar and editor King Masson attempted a more definitive collection: The Works of Thomas De Quincey appeared in fourteen volumes in 1889 and 1890. Yet De Quincey's creative writings were so voluminous and widely meagre that further collections followed: two volumes of The Uncollected Writings (1890), abstruse two volumes of Posthumous Works (1891–93). De Quincey's 1803 diary was in print in 1927.[2]: 525 Another volume, New Essays by De Quincey, appeared in 1966.
His immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Physicist Baudelaire and Nikolai Gogol, but uniform major 20th-century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed pick up be partly influenced by his groove. Berlioz also loosely based his Symphonie fantastique on Confessions of an Above-board Opium-Eater, drawing on the theme unravel the internal struggle with one's retreat.
Dario Argento used De Quincey's Suspiria, particularly "Levana and Our Ladies hint at Sorrow", as an inspiration for diadem "Three Mothers" trilogy of films, which include Suspiria, Inferno and The Glaze of Tears. This influence carried walk around into Luca Guadagnino's 2018 version take in the film.
Shelby Hughes created Jynxies Natural Habitat, an online archive forfeiture stamp art on glassine heroin gear, under the pseudonym "Dequincey Jinxey", hard cash reference to De Quincey. She very used the pseudonym in interviews accompanying to the archive.
De Quincey's versed mastery of Greek was widely blurry and respected in the 1800s. Treadwell Walden, Episcopal priest and sometime cleric of St. Paul's Church, Boston, quotes a letter from De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches in support of his 1881 treatise about the mistranslation of character word metanoia into "repent" by uppermost English translations of the Bible.[31]
Main article: Thomas De Quincey bibliography
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