Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey
- Submitting institution
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Goldsmiths' College
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 2669
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury
- ISBN
- 9781408839768
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This book makes a distinct contribution to our understanding of Thomas De Quincey and sets out a new thesis about the possibilities of biographical form. The author singles out two threads from De Quincey’s vast oeuvre - his obsessions with the ‘fine art of murder’ and with William Wordsworth - exploring the ways in which they advance our understanding of his major works. The book synthesises close reading of primary texts with an exploration of drug and debt addiction informed by work undertaken in an addiction clinic; archival research; an examination of the lesser-known writings of the first-generation Romantics.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Guilty Thing is a biographical study which sets out to explore the nature of biography as well as the nature of Thomas De Quincey. The book is based on the premise that previous lives of De Quincey have done little to explain the oddity of De Quincey’s character and contribution to literature, or the motivating drive of his writing. The aim was to write a De Quinceyian biography, in other words a biography whose voice, shape and flavour fit the voice, shape and flavour of the subject himself. A biography which therefore shows as well as tells, by taking us into De Quincey’s mindset. His addictions – to opium, debt, murder, Wordsworth, grief - were the central events of his life, and so I have tried to bring them to the foreground of the narrative in order to allow them to dictate the story. _x000D_
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What resulted, in terms of research insights, was a study of Romantic influence. The influence of drugs, but also the influence of Wordsworth, both of which were determining. The principle research method was very close reading: returning to well-known texts such as The Prelude, and to lesser-known texts such as the early drafts of De Quincey’s autobiographical essays, order to measure the correspondence between the two. De Quincey’s writing, it transpires, is saturated in Wordsworth – particularly when the subject is murder. _x000D_
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The biography, which argues that De Quinceyian ideas form the basis of much of our cultural pleasures (ie, detective stories), aims to make De Quincey and his context available to the common reader as well as to deepen the understanding of the expert.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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