A Chronology of Thomas De Quincey

1785 1790 1792 1793 1796 1799 1800 Born (15 August) in Manchester, son of Thomas Quincey, textile importer, and Elizabeth Penson. Death of his sister Jane, aged three. Death of his sister Elizabeth, aged nine. Death of his father. Moves to Bath. Enters Bath Grammar School. His mother takes the name De Quincey. 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. 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. Spends summer in Everton, near Liverpool, where he meets William Roscoe, James Currie, and other Whig intellectuals. Flees from Manchester Grammar School. Wanders in North Wales and then spends five months penniless and hungry on the streets of London. 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. Begins occasional use of opium. Meets Charles Lamb. Travels to the Lake District to meet Wordsworth, but loses his nerve and turns back without meeting the poet. Travels again to the Lake District to meet Wordsworth, and again loses his nerve. 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. 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. 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. 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. Enters the Middle Temple briefly to read for the Bar. Grief-stricken by the death of Wordsworths three-year-old daughter Catherine. Becomes addicted to opium. Strained relations with the Wordsworths. Courts Margaret Simpson, the daughter of a Lake District farmer.

1801 1802 1803

1804 1805 1806 1807 1808

1809

1810

1812 1813

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. Birth of son, William Penson, by Margaret Simpson. Estranged from the Wordsworths. Marries Margaret Simpson. William Blackwood founds and edits Blackwoods Magazine, with Wilson, Lockhart, and Hogg as major contributors. 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. Dismissed from editorship of The Westmorland Gazette. With Wilson and Lockhart, writes review of Percy Bysshe Shelleys The Revolt of Islam for Blackwoods Magazine. 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. First publication of the Confessions in book form. Projects a work entitled Confessions of a Murderer but it does not appear. 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). Reviews Thomas Carlyles translation of Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship in The London Magazine. 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. 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. 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. 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. Sketch of Professor Wilson in The Edinburgh Literary Gazette. 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. Dr Parr and his Contemporaries in Blackwoods Magazine. Prosecuted and briefly imprisoned for debt. Klosterheim: or, the Masque, a one-volume gothic romance, published by William Blackwood. 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.

1816 1817 1818

1819 1821

1822 1823

1824 1825

1826 1827 1828

1829 1830

1831 1832 1833

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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. Oxford and A Torys Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism in Taits Magazine. 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. Two tales of terror, The Household Wreck and The Avenger, in Blackwoods Magazine. Recollections of Charles Lamb in Taits Magazine. Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts in Blackwoods Magazine. William Wordsworth in Taits Magazine. Style and The Opium and the China Question in Blackwoods Magazine. Prosecuted for debt. Visits J. P. Nichol at the Glasgow Observatory. Death of his son, Lieutenant Horace De Quincey in China, aged twenty-two. Moves to Mavis Bush Cottage, Lasswade, outside Edinburgh. Publishes one-volume treatise on The Logic of Political Economy with Blackwood. Manuscript fragment of a new paper on Murder as a Fine Art. 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. System of the Heavens as Revealed by Lord Rosses Telescope in Taits Magazine. Joan of Arc and The Nautico-Military Nun of Spain in Taits Magazine. Final Memorials of Charles Lamb in The North British Review. Meets Ralph Waldo Emerson. The English Mail-Coach, his last essay for Blackwoods Magazine. 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. Lord Carlisle on Pope, his last essay for Taits Magazine. 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). 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. 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. Publishes his pamphlet on China with Hogg. Articles on the Indian Mutiny for The Titan (completed 1858). Dies (8 December) in Edinburgh. Buried beside Margaret in St Cuthberts Churchyard.

1835 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845

1846 1847 1848 1849 1850

1851 1853

1854 1856 1857 1859