De Quincey, Thomas 1785-1859
English critic and essayist

Born in Manchester, the son of a merchant, he was educated at Manchester Grammar School, but in 1802 ran away and wandered in Wales, and then to London, where he lived with a young prostitute called Ann. He later described this experience in his Confessions of an English Opium-eater (1822). He then spent a short time at Worcester College, Oxford, and it was here that he became addicted to opium. A visit to his mother in Bath brought him into contact with Coleridge, and through him with Robert Southey and Wordsworth. When these poets settled in the Lake District, De Quincey visited them there and, after a brief sojourn in London (where he met Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt and others of the 'Cockney' school), he went to stay in Grasmere in 1809. Except for The Logic of Political Economy (1841) and an unsuccessful novel, his whole literary output, including the Confessions, consisted of magazine articles. The Confessions appeared in 1821 as a serial in The London Magazine, and at once made him famous. In 1828 the lure of the Edinburgh literary scene drew him to the northern capital, where he lived and worked until his death. For 20 years he lent distinction to Blackwood's Magazine, Tait's Magazine and, occasionally, The Quarterly, with articles like Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (1827), Lake Reminiscences (1834-40), the fantasy Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrows (1845), and Vision of Sudden Death (1849).

Bibliography: J S Lyon, Thomas De Quincey (1969); H S David, Thomas De Quincey (1964)