ABSTRACT
Under the title ‘Brevia’ (Latin for ‘short things’), Japp published in PW I, pp. 185–305, an extensive selection of passages from De Quincey’s unpublished manuscripts. Subtitled ‘Short Essays (In Connection With Each Other)’, this miscellaneous gathering was divided by topic into nine numbered sections, which, though by no means consistent or logical, are retained here, partly for the convenience of readers accustomed to using PW, and partly because it seems better to keep these established divisions, however arbitrary, than either to present the reader with approximately one hundred undifferentiated fragments, or to devise yet another set of headings which future readers might find no more helpful than Japp’s.
