The Works of Thomas De Quincey, Part I Vol 2

Grevel Lindop, Barry Symonds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000749687
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is considered one of the most important English prose writers of the early-19th century. This is the first part of a 21-volume set presenting De Quincey's work, also including previously unpublished material.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER:

BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF A SCHOLAR.

First published in London Magazine IV, September 1821, pp. 293–312.

There is one manuscript, as follows:

MS A: The Wordsworth Library, Dove Cottage, Grasmere, MS 1988:192. A full transcript is given below, pp. 272–324.

A later alternative version of some passages is given in:

MS B: Pierpont Morgan Library PML 5097, a copy of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria De Profundis (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields), 1852, formerly the property of De Quincey’s son-in-law Robert Craig, containing De Quincey’s holograph revisions made in 1854.

The London Magazine

The London Magazine (one of several before and since to bear that name) was established in 1820 as a publishing venture by the printing firm of Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, and for its first year was known as ‘Baldwin’s London Magazine’ to distinguish it from a shortlived rival, ‘Gold’s London Magazine’. Its first editor, John Scott, established Baldwin’s London as a periodical remarkable both for its literary standards and for its liberal politics. He also gave it a specifically metropolitan focus which fostered the talents and readership of early contributors such as Lamb and Hazlitt.

The magazine’s London bias as well as its liberalism made it the natural champion of the ‘Cockney’ poets Keats and Hunt against attacks in the Tory Blackwood’s Magazine, and fierce antagonism between the two periodicals culminated in a duel in which Scott was fatally wounded by Jonathan Christie, a member of the Blackwood’s editorial team.

Scott died on 27 February 1821 and in April the magazine was bought by the publishing partnership of Taylor and Hessey, best known today as the publishers of Keats and Clare. The printing continued to be done by Baldwin’s, the original owners. The new proprietors made their début with the issue for July 1821. Taylor became editor, though the more active editorial hand was often that of Thomas Hood, who became sub-editor, often wrote the editorials and guided the magazine during Taylor’s frequent periods of illness and depression.

The London Magazine was notable for its literary brilliance rather than for its circulation. In its prime during the early 1820s its contributors included not only Lamb, Hazlitt and Hood, but also Thomas Noon Talfourd, T. G. Wainewright, John Clare, H. F. Cary, B. W. Procter, Allan Cunningham and, of course, De Quincey, who remarked (Tait’s Magazine VII, 1840, p. 771) that ‘certainly a literary Pleiad might have been gathered out of the stars connected with this journal’. The magazine sold for 2s. 6d., the same price as Blackwood’s (Chilcott, p. 154), but sales never exceeded 2,500 (compared with Blackwood’s 6,500 and the Quarterly’s 14,000). However, the magazine paid its authors well: rates were variable, but a guinea per printed page (and hence sixteen guineas for a ‘sheet’ – sixteen printed octavo pages of the magazine) was not unusual after mid-1821, a factor which, together with convivial monthly dinner-parties for the contributors, helped to keep the London’s authors loyal.

Articles were set in type as soon as accepted, proofread, and then stockpiled before being assembled to make up the full issue, which normally went to press during the last week of the month, going on sale a day or two before the beginning of the month named on the magazine’s cover. A typical ‘number’ contained roughly one hundred pages of miscellaneous articles followed by a ‘Monthly Register’ of some twenty pages carrying a wide and varying range of economic and statistical data such as agricultural and share prices, weather-reports, announcements of births, marriages and deaths, and lists of bankruptcies.

By 1824 both authors and readers were drifting away, the former alienated by Taylor’s confused editorial policies (which led to ill-judged rejection or cutting of articles), the latter bored by the magazine’s increasing preoccupation with political economy (an interest of Taylor’s which De Quincey helped to foster).

Introduced to the London by Talfourd in 1821 (see below), De Quincey instantly became a notable contributor, and by the end of the year was closely enough involved in Taylor’s editorial counsels to draft an unpublished piece ‘On the London Magazine’ outlining the London’s policy for the coming year. He was to contribute on an enormous range of topics until January 1825, by which time Taylor had handed over the editorship to Henry Southern, an editor of the Utilitarian Westminster Review. The London survived on meagre sales until 1828, when it was bought by Charles Knight, who incorporated it into the New Monthly Magazine in July 1829.

Detailed treatment of the London Magazine’s history is available in Josephine Bauer, The London Magazine, 1820–29 (Anglistica Series I, Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1953); Edmund Blunden, Keats’s Publisher: A Memoir of John Taylor (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936); Tim Chilcott, A Publisher and his Circle: The Life and Work of John Taylor, Keats’s Publisher (London: Routledge, 1972); Patrick O’Leary, Regency Editor: The Life of John Scott (Aberdeen University Press, 1983); and F. P. Riga and C. A. Prance, Index to the London Magazine (New York: Garland, 1978).

Textual History

The origins of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater may perhaps be traced back to as early as the autumn of 1818, when De Quincey claimed to have started an autobiography, telling his mother of ‘my life which I have partly written and design to publish before my death’ (Letter in the Cornell Wordsworth Collection). Passages dated ‘May, 1818’ and ‘June, 1819’ in Part II of Confessions (pp. 70 and 72 below), however fictitious in detail, suggest that De Quincey at times kept a journal of his dreams. The conception of a literary work which would draw such materials together around the organising theme of opium was first explicitly broached, however, in December 1820.

Since late 1819, shortly after De Quincey’s resignation of the editorship of the Westmorland Gazette, John Wilson had been pressing him to contribute to Blackwood’s (DQM II. 42–3). De Quincey had agreed in principle, and perhaps supplied material for ‘Observations on the Revolt of Islam’, which appeared in the January 1819 Blackwood’s (see Appendix to Vol. 1). Eventually he travelled to Edinburgh, arriving probably on 7 December 1820 (Symonds, p. 47). His letter to William Blackwood written on 12 December implies that an article on the subject of opium has already been promised, stating that ‘Opium has reduced me for the last six years to one general discourtesy of utter silence. But this I shall think of with not so much pain, if this same Opium enables me (as I think it will) to send you an article not unserviceable to your Magazine’ (Symonds, p. 56). Late on Wednesday 13 December he speaks of ‘My Opium art[icle] being the 2nd’ of his planned contributions to Blackwood’s, and promises that after daybreak ‘forthwith I shall go to the Opium, which I hope to have ready by Saturday morning. The Opium article will be at least a sheet’. It will, he adds, be ‘finished I trust, by 1 o’clock on Sat’ (Symonds, pp. 57–8). On 14 December he laments the time taken by translation: ‘I am persuaded that I could have written 10pp. of my Opium art, whilst I have done these 2 [of Schiller]’ (Symonds, p. 60), and on 19 December he tells Blackwood ‘The Opium article is very far advanced: and this I execute with pleasure to myself.’

These letters explain De Quincey’s statement in the 1821 ‘Notice to the Reader’ (p. 37 below) that ‘the notes and memoranda for this narrative were drawn up originally about last Christmas’. However, nothing more is known of this early opium-related work, which must have been to some extent a prototype of Confessions. Early in January 1821 De Quincey quarrelled with Blackwood and soon left Edinburgh, returning to Fox Ghyll, Rydal, having published only one item (‘The Sport of Fortune’) in Blackwood’s.

A letter of 3 March from Fox Ghyll shows De Quincey taking the side of the London Magazine in its feud with Blackwood’s and obtaining ‘all the numbers of the Lond. Mag. which can be found’ for his Ambleside neighbour George Gee (Symonds, pp. 72–3). In June he travelled to London with a letter of introduction from Wordsworth to Thomas Noon Talfourd (Eaton, p. 271), who in turn introduced him to Taylor and Hessey, the London’s proprietors. During the first week of August De Quincey, in lodgings over the premises of the German bookseller R. H. Bohte at 4 York Street (now Tavistock Street), Covent Garden, was at work on Confessions. On 9 August he acknowledged a cheque for ten guineas from John Taylor, noting

I will avail myself of your kind permission to delay the conclusion for a day (or two), because I shall thus be able to execute some parts of it in perhaps a more satisfactory manner and because I shall have time to write it more legibly – and with less interlineation. (Symonds, p. 79).

Later that day the threat of arrest for debt forced him to leave his lodgings and work amid the ‘tumult’ of the ‘coffee-rooms…of great Coach-Inns’ (Symonds, p. 83). The reference to De Quincey’s birthday on p. 24 below shows him revisiting Brunell’s house in Greek Street on 15 August and writing about the experience the same evening. He returned to York Street the following day, to find part of the article (probably the opening address ‘To the Reader’ and the narrative up to the flight from the Manchester Grammar School) awaiting him in proof. De Quincey’s letter shows him ‘anxious to supply the best remedy in my power’ to some objection raised by Taylor, and on 18 August (Symonds, p. 85) he expresses anxiety that ‘The title leading the reader to expect a record of the effects of opium, he must naturally be on the fret whilst reading anything which baulks his expectation’. The titles ‘Introductory Narrative’ or ‘Preliminary Confessions’ are proposed as a remedy.

On 22 August De Quincey told Taylor that ‘one half sheet (of letter paper) will complete the first part’ (Symonds, p. 85) – the work was now evidently thought of as consisting of ‘parts’ – and promised this last portion by 9 o’clock the following morning. Evidently the question of just where the first instalment would end was still an open one, for on 25 August De Quincey told Taylor that

The remaining part, i.e. the proper Confessions, will make at least 16 printed pp. such as yours; but I think as much as the part already printed. I observe the close which you probably allude to – as one of the good ones; I suppose it to be – at – ‘how it happened, the reader will learn from what remains of this introd. narrative.’ But, from the certainty that the rest will not be much (if at all) less than what is already printed, perhaps you will think it best to publish the whole. (Symonds, pp. 87–8)

The conclusion proposed by Taylor occurs on p. 27 below; De Quincey’s statement that it is ‘one of the good ones’ makes it clear that the placing of the division between the two parts was a matter of debate and was not settled until a very late stage. Only five days later, on 27 August, (Symonds, p. 88) a letter expresses De Quincey’s fear that he may already be ‘too late’ (presumably because the magazine may already have gone to press) to have ‘a copy or two of the Confessions – so far as they have gone already – struck off on any sort of paper’. No doubt the copy was wanted to help him in the composition of ‘Part II’.

This late decision about the length of the first instalment is consistent with the fact that whilst ‘Part II’ of Confessions is so designated, the first instalment bears no such numbering, and concludes with an editorial note promising ‘the remainder of this very interesting Article’ for the October number. These details suggest that Confessions was at first regarded as a single essay, the division into two ‘Parts’ being an expedient imposed by the fact that it had far outgrown the space available in a single issue of the magazine. De Quincey’s own headings – ‘To the Reader’, ‘Preliminary Confessions’, ‘The Pleasures of Opium’, ‘Introduction to the Pains of Opium’ and ‘The Pains of Opium’, suggest a progressive five-part structure which cuts across the magazine’s division.

The composition of ‘Part II’ is less fully documented. A letter of Friday 7 September 1821 pleads ill-health in excuse of the fact that Hessey has ‘not already received the Second Part of the “Opium Eater’” and promises ‘to set to work this evening’ and

to let you have some quantity (say 5 or 6 of your pages) on Monday about 2 o’clock: and I could engage to keep up every following day with 3 pages more, as I would not allow any other call upon my time to interfere with it. If you think that this would not answer the purpose, or fear the apparent hazard of it, perhaps it might be better not to place my article first (which intention with regard to my article, by the bye, Mr. Taylor did not communicate to me): however, I am sure that I could depend upon myself for finishing the article by Friday next (this day week). (Symonds, pp. 91–2)

On 8 September De Quincey wrote to Hessey asking for the loan of Wordsworth’s Excursion ‘from which,’ he explained, ‘I want a quotation’ and of Keats’s Poems (i.e., the 1820 volume Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems) (Symonds, p. 98). Quotations from The Excursion and a possible allusion to Keats are documented in the notes to the present edition.

On 17 September De Quincey sent ‘a part from the middle of the Pleasures of Opium which happens to be corrected: though I have been up all night. I have no more quite corrected’. ‘Correction’ here evidently means revision of written material rather than checking of proof. He also cautions Hessey:

Perhaps you will not look at the MS. before it goes to the Press: if you do, I must beg that you will not judge of the article from this part, which is the worst and most unsatisfactory to my mind. The Pains of Opium and a few other parts, are those on which I depend. (Symonds, p. 100)

On 20 September he promises more text imminently, but says he is retaining ‘the earlier parts’ and ‘the close of the Pleasures’ to ‘refer to’. A desire to ensure the formal integrity of the whole instalment is also implied by the admission ‘I much wish to see the whole lying under my eye finished all but final corrections’ (Symonds, p. 101). On the other hand, an undated letter from about this time presents composition as in some respects highly flexible, indicating that

if even 24pp. [of the magazine] were at liberty, I could fill them. And what remains is incomparably the best…I speak merely of what is necessary to the best execution of the art[icle] which in some measure will determine its own length. (Symonds, p. 101)

Surprisingly, the same letter ends by mentioning that ‘the Malay story might be left out, easily if you think so. My reason for introducing it I have told in the text’ (Symonds, p. 102). Another undated note states that

Some passages can easily be left out of what I send: – I have kept back several sheets, convinced that you will have too much. Yet one is about the best dream. I will, for a chance of having your opinion, send it by the person who brings the Proof. (Symonds, p. 103)

Finally, on 22 September, when the magazine must have been within a very few days of going to press, De Quincey was debating with Hessey the advisability of ending ‘Part II’ with the promise of a Third Part. They had already discussed the matter ‘last night’, when Hessey had evidently shown himself reluctant to believe in De Quincey’s assurance of a further ‘Part’ for the November issue of the magazine. Now De Quincey announces:

I pledge my word to you that you shall have what remains for the next No. on any day you will fix. I will set about it now. And really, this morning, I find so much which will to many perhaps appear the best parts – that it would be a pity, now that the subject has been touched at all, not to publish them. – You say that the continuation of the subject will not be objected to as oppressive. I must not have presumed this myself, but as you have said it I may assume it: that being so, what objection could there be to a close simply such as this:

Circumstances, not interesting to the Public, having greatly interrupted the author in the progress of this article, he has latterly found himself obliged very much to hurry his execution of it; feeling that an engagement once made to the Public ought to be fulfilled at whatever inconvenience, or whatever injury to the article. The author is aware however that the article has thus suffered as a composition in its latter parts, and that his materials have taken a disjointed shape not the most favourable to the orderly development of the effects, as they arose in succession, from the continued use of opium. This further ill consequence has followed – that he has not found it possible to crowd the whole of the narrative into the space allotted: and, under ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Conventions for manuscript transcription
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [Part I]
• Notice to the Reader
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Part II
• Letter from the English Opium Eater
• Appendix (1822)
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1856)
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821 [Part I]: a manuscript transcript
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821 Part II: two discarded fragments
• Explanatory notes
• Textual notes