ABSTRACT
Thomas De Quincey preoccupation with women has been successfully explored by some of his best critics. In particular, the disturbing proliferation of dead women in his writing and their relationship to his idea of the aesthetic has been examined alongside his speculations on language and the nature of 'style'. Attention to De Quincey disturbing representation of women has produced a sharper understanding of the gendered nature of his conception of writing. Similarly, by examining De Quincey ambivalent response to 'the language of books', Mary Jacobus has also defined the gendered nature of his response to 'style'. Tim Fulford's account of De Quinceywithin the wider context of masculinity and Romanticism takes Burke's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful and the consequent gendering of 'power' as its basis. The friendship was initiated as a result of reading Lyrical Bal-lads and discovering in the poems what he took to be a new understanding of the power of genial feelings.
