The authoritative edition of De Quincey’s Works is that edited by David Masson and published in fourteen volumes by Adam and Charles Black (Edinburgh).  For American students the Riverside Edition, in twelve volumes (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston), will be found convenient.  The most satisfactory Life of De Quincey is the one by Masson in the English Men of Letters series.  Of a more anecdotal type are the Life of De Quincey, by H.A.  Page, whose real name is Alexander H. Japp (2 vols., New York, 1877), and De Quincey Memorials (New York, 1891), by the same author.  Very interesting is the brief volume, Recollections of Thomas De Quincey, by John R. Findlay (Edinburgh, 1886), who also contributes the paper on De Quincey to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. De Quincey and his Friends, by James Hogg (London, 1895), is another volume of recollections, souvenirs, and anecdotes, which help to make real their subject’s personality.  Besides the editor, other writers contribute to this volume:  Richard Woodhouse, John R. Findlay, and John Hill Burton, who has given under the name “Papaverius,” a picturesque description of the Opium-Eater.  The student should always remember that De Quincey’s own chapters in the Autobiographic Sketches, and the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which are among the most charming and important of his writings, are also the most authoritative and most valuable sources of our information concerning him.  In reading about De Quincey, do not fail to read De Quincey himself.

The best criticism of the Opium-Eater’s work is found in William Minto’s Manual of English Prose Literature (Ginn & Co.).  A shorter essay is contained in Saintsbury’s History of Nineteenth Century Literature.  A very valuable list of all De Quincey’s writings, in chronological order, is given by Fred N. Scott, in his edition of De Quincey’s essays on Style, Rhetoric, and Language (Allyn & Bacon).  Numerous magazine articles may be found by referring to Poole’s Index.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Autobiographic Sketches, Chap.  I.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Part II.

[4] De Quincey (English Men of Letters), David Masson, p. 110.

HOW TO READ DE QUINCEY.

“De Quincey’s sixteen volumes of magazine articles are full of brain from beginning to end.  At the rate of about half a volume a day, they would serve for a month’s reading, and a month continuously might be worse expended.  There are few courses of reading from which a young man of good natural intelligence would come away more instructed, charmed, and stimulated, or, to express the matter as definitely as possible, with his mind more stretched.  Good