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Guilty thing : a life of Thomas De Quincey / Frances Wilson.

by Wilson, Frances, 1964-

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Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.

De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859.

Essayists -- Great Britain -- Biography.

Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography.

Drug addicts -- Great Britain -- Biography.

Opium abuse -- England -- Biography.

9780374167301 (hc.)

First American edition.

397 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [373]-380) and index.

The prelude -- Books -- Childhood and schooltime -- Schooltime (continued) -- Residence in London -- Summer vacation -- Residence at Oxford -- Retrospect: love of nature leading to love of mankind -- Home at Grasmere -- Residence in Dove Cottage and the revolution -- Residence in London and Grasmere -- The recluse -- Imagination, impaired and restored -- Same subject (continued) -- Postscript.

"A biography of one of the most mysterious members of Wordsworth's circle and the last of the Romantics. Thomas De Quincey was an obsessive. He was obsessed with Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose lyrical ballads provided the script to his life, and by the idea of sudden death. Running away from school to pursue the two poets, De Quincey insinuated himself into their world. Basing his sensibility on Wordsworth's and his character on Coleridge's, he forged a triangle of unusual psychological complexity. Aged twenty-four, De Quincey replaced Wordsworth as the tenant of Dove Cottage, the poet's former residence in Grasmere. Opium was the making of De Quincey, allowing him to dissolve self-conflict, eliminate self-recrimination, and divest himself of guilt. Opium also allowed him to write, and under the pseudonym "The Opium-Eater" De Quincey emerged as the strangest and most original journalist of his age. His influence has been considerable. Poe became his double; Dostoevsky went into exile with Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in his pocket; and Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Alfred Hitchcock, and Vladimir Nabokov were all De Quincey devotees"--Provided by publisher.

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