[Ransoming the Books]

The manuscript, in the Berg collection (unnumbered), is a single sheet of unwatermarked paper, written on both sides, and catalogued as a letter. In the absence of other pages, however, there is no way of knowing for what purpose the text was written. Part of it was published in Japp LW. P. 435. In the 1830s De Quincey was in the habit of storing books at the hamlet of Lingstubbs near Penrith, and in a letter to Adam Black (14 July 1838) he mentioned that a Penrith ‘farmer, to whose care I had confided my library, had advertised about two thousand volumes for public sale’ (MS in Yale University Library). It seems likely that the present piece was written shortly afterwards, so it is tentatively assigned here to the latter half of 1838.