ABSTRACT

First published in Blackwood’s, June 1841, pp. 737–56. Not reprinted in De Quincey’s lifetime. There is no known manuscript of the article as published, though a transcript of a related fragment exists; see below. For the attribution, see W. E. A. Axon, ‘The Canon of De Quincey’s Writings’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom, 32 (1914), pp. 1–46.