The Works of Thomas De Quincey, Part II

Review of Volumes 8-9, 12-14, 17-18: '... there are few other writers who can be relied on to include, in the most obscure corners, some real surprise, and although these volumes contain not much other than commissioned essays on all sorts of bizarre subjects for the journals, they are full of delights... this is turning into a very fascinating and valuable edition, bringing all sorts of things to light which no one has read for over a century. The experience of reading it consecutively is one of appreciating how many more subjects De Quincey was interested in, and how much more energy he brought to his exploration, than almost anyone at the time, or anyone since.' - Philip Hensher, The Spectator 'We have every reason ... to be grateful for this new edition of The Works of Thomas De Quincey, more complete than any of its predecessors and edited on much more conservative and defensible principles...' - Nicholas Halmi, The Wordsworth Circle 'Grevel Lindop has already enlarged our understanding of De Quincey with a fine biography: this edition, of which these seven volumes are the first instalment, ought to put De Quincey in his proper place, not just as the author of four or five celebrated anthology pieces and one classic autobiography, but as one of the central roving intelligences of English romanticism, a mind to rank not far short of Coleridge's... The value of this complete edition is enormous: I thought I knew a good deal of De Quincey, but now realise how much of his best work I still have to discover. Full of excitement as these first seven volumes are, the most gripping is the volume devoted to the Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which contains the 1821 text, the enormous 1856 expansion, and the extraordinarily fascinating manuscript of the first part of the 1821 text. Textual bibliography and the revisions of an author are usually rather dry subjects, but here, in concentrated form, you see an astonishingly fertile and original mind inventing, rethinking, expanding, caught in the full flight of genius. There is nothing like it in the world: and I curse Pickering and Chatto from the bottom of my heart for making us wait even a few months for the rest of this edition. I want it now, this second.' - Philip Hensher, The Spectator Read a review of this edition in TEXT Excerpt from this review: 'These seven volumes represent a mammoth step forward in De Quincey studies, and are an astonishing achievement. When this project is complete it will quite simply be the critical standard for the foreseeable future. All institutional libraries and Romantic scholars should have it on their shelves.' - Duncan Wu, TEXT Reviews 'In 1889-90, David Masson published his fourteen-volume edition, and for over a hundred years this has been recognised as the standard work. Nevertheless, from time to time, significant amounts of uncollected De Quincey have continued to be uncovered. Grevel Lindop's new edition incorporates all these findings while also making some new attributions of its own. The first seven volumes of this twenty-one-volume set cover De Quincey's literary production from 1803-31, bringing a number of things together for the first time, most notably the 1803 Diary, with all the deleted passages restored, the numerous contributions made to the Edinburgh Evening Post and Edinburgh Saturday Post in the late 1820s, the review and full text translation of Walladmor, as well as manuscript material from the author's youth. It also contains a large number of articles contributed to the London Magazine and Blackwood's and a wealth of miscellaneous material originally published in the Westmoreland Gazette. The editors have chosen to reproduce first versions wherever possible, with textual notes at the back of each volume containing the full documentation of variant readings, including passages that only appear in the Selections Grave and Gay. The only exception to this rule is the volume devoted to the Confessions, which reproduces both the London Magazine original and the 1856 revision, along with some significant manuscript material dating from 1821. Here as elsewhere, the contributors have deployed a fine combination of painstaking scholarship and critical tact. Each article has a short introduction containing essential background information and a brief summary of the history of the text, and in almost every case the final result is helpful without being overly directive. Each volume has a full list of explanatory notes, but cross-referencing between volumes is kept to a minimum.' - Gregory Dart, The Times Literary Supplement Review of Volumes 1-7: 'Lindop in his excellent and informative "General Introduction" to the volumes accepts that "completeness" is an "unattainable ideal" in the context of collecting De Quincey's works, but he argues convincingly that the Pickering & Chatto edition bears "some meaningful approximation" to this ideal. Previously De Quincey scholars and Romantic generalists have relied almost exclusively on David Masson's 1889-90 edition of De Quincy's writings in fourteen volumes (soon and sadly to be relegated from the open space of the shelves to the dark, basement stores of many university libraries)... The editorial work for the volume is authoritative and scrupulous, as one might expect from the team of scholars employed. Grevel Lindop presents an expert discussion of De Quincey's importance, proposing him as "the most influential of all early nineteenth-century English prose writers" (I, p. xiii) as well as proving a succinct and informative overview of De Quincey's life, writings, and intellectual milieu... This edition is a truly daunting and impressive achievement. Just a mere browse through its pages stuns the reader by displaying a wealth of De Quincey undiscovered by all but the most serious and dedicated of his scholars. It is bound to make the life of Romantic critics much easier and, I think, enhance De Quincey's presence in other Romantic period criticism generally... This edition will become the standard edition for reference and all serious academic libraries will need to purchase the full edition ...' - Peter J Kitson, British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin