Guilty thing : a life of Thomas de Quincey
Wilson, Frances, 1964-2016
Books, Manuscripts
Find it!
Thomas De Quincey - opium-eater, celebrity journalist, and professional doppelganger - is embedded in our culture. Modelling his character on Coleridge and his sensibility on Wordsworth, De Quincey took over the poet's former cottage in Grasmere and turned it into an opium den. Here, increasingly detached from the world, he nurtured his growing hatred of his former idols and his obsession with murder as one of the fine arts. De Quincey may never have felt the equal of the giants of the Romantic Literature he so worshipped but the writing style he pioneered - scripted and sculptured emotional memoir - was to inspire generations of writers: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf. This biography tells the riches-to-rags story of a figure of dazzling complexity and dazzling originality, whose rackety life was lived on the run.
Main title:
Guilty thing : a life of Thomas de Quincey / Frances Wilson.
Author:
Wilson, Frances, 1964-, author
Imprint:
London : Bloomsbury, 2016.London : Bloomsbury, 2016.
Collation:
397 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 24 cm
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:
9781408839775 (hbk)
Dewey class:
828.809828.809 DEQ
Local class:
828.809 DEQ
Language:
English
Related title:
Guilty thing [electronic resource] : a life of Thomas de Quincey
BRN:
2309165