A Chronology of Thomas de Quincey

8/3/2019 A Chronology of Thomas de Quincey

1/3

1

A Chronology of Thomas De Quincey

1785 Born (15 August) in Manchester, son of Thomas Quincey, textile importer, and Elizabeth Penson.

1790 Death of his sister Jane, aged three.

1792 Death of his sister Elizabeth, aged nine.

1793 Death of his father.

1796 Moves to Bath. Enters Bath Grammar School. His mother takes the name De Quincey.

1799 Enters Winkfield School, Wiltshire. Reads Wordsworth and Coleridges Lyrical Ballads, which he

later describes as the greatest event in the unfolding of my own mind.

1800 His translation from Horaces Twenty-Second Ode wins third prize in a contest, and is published in

The Monthly Preceptor. Accidentally meets George III at Frogmore. Summer holiday in Ireland.

Enters Manchester Grammar School.

1801 Spends summer in Everton, near Liverpool, where he meets William Roscoe, James Currie, andother Whig intellectuals.

1802 Flees from Manchester Grammar School. Wanders in North Wales and then spends five months

penniless and hungry on the streets of London.

1803 Reconciled with his mother and guardians. Spends another summer in Everton. Reads gothic fiction

voraciously. Deepening admiration for Coleridge, whom he begins to think the greatest man that

has ever appeared. Writes fan letter to Wordsworth, and the two begin a correspondence. Enters

Worcester College, Oxford.

1804 Begins occasional use of opium. Meets Charles Lamb.

1805 Travels to the Lake District to meet Wordsworth, but loses his nerve and turns back without

meeting the poet.

1806 Travels again to the Lake District to meet Wordsworth, and again loses his nerve.

1807 Meets Coleridge. Gives him three hundred pounds under the polite pretence of a loan. Escorts

Coleridges family to the Lake District and meets Wordsworth at Grasmere.

1808 Sees Coleridge daily and assists him with his lectures for the Royal Institution on Poetry and

Principles of Taste. Bolts from Oxford midway through his final examinations and does not receive

his degree. Introduced to John Wilson, the future Christopher North of Blackwoods Magazine.

The two become close friends.

1809 Supervises the printing of Wordsworths pamphlet on The Convention of Cintra, and contributes a

lengthy Postscript on Sir John Moores Letters. Moves to Grasmere, where he rents Dove Cottage,the former home of the Wordsworths.

1810 Enters period of greatest intimacy with Wordsworth and Coleridge. Reads manuscript of

Wordsworths Prelude. With Wilson and Alexander Blair, contributes the Letter of Mathetes to

Coleridges metaphysical newspaper, The Friend.

1812 Enters the Middle Temple briefly to read for the Bar. Grief-stricken by the death of Wordsworths

three-year-old daughter Catherine.

1813 Becomes addicted to opium. Strained relations with the Wordsworths. Courts Margaret Simpson,

the daughter of a Lake District farmer.


2/3

2

1814 Visits Edinburgh with Wilson , where he meets leading members of the Scottish literary scene,

including J. G. Lockhart, the future biographer of Walter Scott, and James Hogg, the Ettrick

Shepherd.

1816 Birth of son, William Penson, by Margaret Simpson. Estranged from the Wordsworths.

1817 Marries Margaret Simpson. William Blackwood founds and edits Blackwoods Magazine, with

Wilson, Lockhart, and Hogg as major contributors.

1818 With Wordsworth, publishes the Tory jeremiad Close Comments Upon a Straggling Speech, a

denunciation of Henry Brougham, Independent Whig candidate in the parliamentary election

campaign in Westmorland. Appointed editor of the local Tory newspaper, The Westmorland

Gazette. Slides deeper into debt. Lucid opium nightmares.

1819 Dismissed from editorship of The Westmorland Gazette. With Wilson and Lockhart, writes review of

Percy Bysshe Shelleys The Revolt of Islam for Blackwoods Magazine.

1821 Translation of Friedrich Schillers The Sport of Fortune published in Blackwoods Magazine.

Quarrels with William Blackwood. Publishes Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in the London

Magazine. Conversations with John Keatss friend Richard Woodhouse.

1822 First publication of the Confessions in book form. Projects a work entitled Confessions of a

Murderer but it does not appear.

1823 Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater, including On the Knocking at the Gate in

Macbeth, in the London Magazine. Appears as The Opium-Eater in the Noctes Ambrosianae, a

series of raucous and wide-ranging dialogues published in Blackwoods Magazine (completed 1835).

1824 Reviews Thomas Carlyles translation of Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship in The London

Magazine.

1825 Translates and abridges the German pseudo-Waverley novel Walladmor. Almost certainly travels to

Germany. Probable composition of the manuscript on Peter Anthony Fonk, which he later

attempts to incorporate into a sequel to On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. Leaves

The London Magazine.

1826 Rejoins Blackwoods Magazine, where he publishes his review of Robert Gilliess German Stories;

selected from the Works of Hoffman, De la Motte Fouqu, Pichlet, Kreuse, and others.

1827 On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts in Blackwoods Magazine. Begins to write for The

Edinburgh Saturday Post. Meets Carlyle and an intimacy develops.

1828 The Toilette of the Hebrew Lady and Elements of Rhetoric in Blackwoods Magazine. Writes the

manuscript fragment, To the Editor of Blackwoods Magazine, an attempt at a sequel to On

Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.

1829 Sketch of Professor Wilson in The Edinburgh Literary Gazette.

1830 Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays, Richard Bentley, and a series of heated Tory diatribes,

including French Revolution and Political Anticipations, in Blackwoods Magazine. Moves

permanently to Edinburgh.

1831 Dr Parr and his Contemporaries in Blackwoods Magazine. Prosecuted and briefly imprisoned for

debt.

1832 Klosterheim: or, the Masque, a one-volume gothic romance, published by William Blackwood.

1833 Contributes a translation of Kants Age of the Earth and an assessment of Mrs Hannah More to

Taits Magazine, the leading Scottish rival of Blackwoods Magazine. Twice prosecuted for debt.

Takes refuge in debtors sanctuary at Holyrood. Death of son Julius, aged three.


3/3

3

1834 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Sketches of Life and Manners from the Autobiography of a Late

Opium-Eater (sporadically until 1841) in Taits Magazine. Three times prosecuted for debt. Death

of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and William Blackwood. Blackwoods sons Robert and

Alexander take over the management of the magazine.

1835 Oxford and A Torys Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism in Taits Magazine.

1837 The Revolt of the Tartars in Blackwoods Magazine. Articles on Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, and

Pope for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Twice prosecuted for debt. Death of his wife Margaret.

1838 Two tales of terror, The Household Wreck and The Avenger, in Blackwoods Magazine.

Recollections of Charles Lamb in Taits Magazine.

1839 Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts in Blackwoods Magazine. William

Wordsworth in Taits Magazine.

1840 Style and The Opium and the China Question in Blackwoods Magazine. Prosecuted for debt.

1841 Visits J. P. Nichol at the Glasgow Observatory.

1842 Death of his son, Lieutenant Horace De Quincey in China, aged twenty-two.

1843 Moves to Mavis Bush Cottage, Lasswade, outside Edinburgh.

1844 Publishes one-volume treatise on The Logic of Political Economy with Blackwood. Manuscript

fragment of a new paper on Murder as a Fine Art.

1845 Coleridge and Opium-Eating and Suspiria de Profundis in Blackwoods Magazine. On

Wordsworths Poetry and Notes on Gilfillans Gallery of Literary Portraits: Godwin, Foster, Hazlitt,

Shelley, Keats (completed 1846) in Taits Magazine.

1846 System of the Heavens as Revealed by Lord Rosses Telescope in Taits Magazine.

1847 Joan of Arc and The Nautico-Military Nun of Spain in Taits Magazine.

1848 Final Memorials of Charles Lamb in The North British Review. Meets Ralph Waldo Emerson.

1849 The English Mail-Coach, his last essay for Blackwoods Magazine.

1850 Begins to contribute frequently to Hoggs Instructor. Ticknor, Reed, and Fields of Boston begins

publication of De Quinceys Writings (twenty-two volumes, completed in 1856). Death of

Wordsworth.

1851 Lord Carlisle on Pope, his last essay for Taits Magazine.

1853 Begins sometimes extensive revision of his work for Selections Grave and Gay, an edition issued by

the Edinburgh publisher James Hogg (fourteen volumes, completed 1860). Autobiographic Sketches

appear as Volumes One and Two of Selections Grave and Gay (completed 1854).

1854 Takes lodgings at 42 Lothian Street, Edinburgh . Publishes his Postscript to On Murder

Considered as One of the Fine Arts in Volume Four of Selections Grave and Gay. Death of Wilson.

1856 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, revised and expanded, appears as Volume V of Selections

Grave and Gay. Begins to contribute to Hoggs monthly magazine, The Titan.

1857 Publishes his pamphlet on China with Hogg. Articles on the Indian Mutiny for The Titan (completed

1858).

1859 Dies (8 December) in Edinburgh. Buried beside Margaret in St Cuthberts Churchyard.

Documents

A Chronology of Thomas de Quincey