Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater

In editing De Quincey’s writings, David Masson (in M X, pp. 425–55) reprinted only the short pieces of 1823/4, but he bracketed the early entries of April/May 1823 under the collective heading ‘Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater‘. Although this covering title was first used for the entries in September, it was reasonable for Masson to see the entire group as having a generic kinship. The volume entitled Note-book of an English Opium-eater, in F vol. XXI (1855), omitted several of the short pieces of 1823/4 and added others that were published later; three of the ‘Notes’, ‘Walking Stewart’, ‘Falsification of the History of England’ and ‘On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth’, were reprinted in SGG, vols VIII, XII and XIV; others were added, with the heading ‘Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater’, in the posthumous vol. XVI (1871).