[Diary, March/April to June, 1803]

The original holograph diary is held by Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool, England; this was published in facsimile with a printed transcript in 1927. That these passages are usually of a sexual nature, and that others of a similar nature remain unexpurgated, suggests that a careless but censorious reader of the diary might have been at work. Additionally there is a series of unevenly spaced and similarly chronologically disrupted entries by De Quincey running 'upside down' in reverse from the back of the diary. With the exception of two entries by De Quincey himself the catalogue is in an unknown hand; it is presented as an appendix to the diary itself. As the diary indicates, De Quincey had ready access in Everton and Liverpool to circulating libraries, private libraries and booksellers. The unresolved conflicts in De Quincey's life which lay behind his flight to London can be seen bodied out in the diary.