The Works of Thomas De Quincey, Part I Vol 1


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Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is considered one of the most important English prose writers of the early-19th century. This is the first part of a 21-volume set presenting De Quincey's work, also including previously unpublished material.




The Lucy Poems


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Written between the years 1798 and 1801, The Lucy Poems is a charming, pocket-sized collection of William Wordsworth’s Lucy poems, first published in one of his best-known works, Lyrical Ballads. The lyrical poetry in this volume explores nature motifs alongside melancholic themes of grief and unrequited love, surrounding a young English girl’s death. Lucy’s identity continues to be unknown and she is commonly thought to be figurative, a literary device for Wordsworth to reflect his own feelings of longing and loss on to. This collection includes all five of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems: - ‘Stange fits of passion I have known’ - ‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways’ - ‘I travelled among unknown men’ - ‘Three years she grew in sun and shower’ - ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’ Wordsworth was traveling Germany with his sister, Dorothy, at the time of writing this series. His growing irritation at his traveling companion and his desire to be reunited with his close friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is evident in the works. Four of the five poems were first published in the collection Lyrical Ballads, composed by Wordsworth and Coleridge, that went on to form part of the early Romantic movement in England. This small edition of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems has been republished by Read & Co. Books Ragged Hand, complete with introductory excerpts from Thomas De Quincey and Thomas Carlyle. The Lucy Poems is an ideal collection for lovers of Romantic era poetry and Wordsworth’s beautiful nature imagery - the perfect companion for those who love reading poetry on the go.







The Collected Writings


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Uncollected Writings


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On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts


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'People begin to see that something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed - a knife - a purse - and a dark lane...' In this provocative and blackly funny essay, Thomas de Quincey considers murder in a purely aesthetic light and explains how practically every philosopher over the past two hundred years has been murdered - 'insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him'. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859). Thomas de Quincey's Confessions and an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings is available in Penguin Classics.










Autobiographic Sketches


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Suspiria de Profundis


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The Suspiria is a collection of prose poems, or what De Quincey called “impassioned prose,” erratically written and published starting in 1854. Each Suspiria is a short essay written in reflection of the opium dreams De Quincey would experience over the course of his lifetime addiction, and they are considered by some critics to be some of the finest examples of prose poetry in all of English literature. De Quincey originally planned them as a sequel of sorts to his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, but the first set was published separately in Blackwood’s Magazine in the spring and summer of that 1854. De Quincey then published a revised version of those first Suspiria, along with several new ones, in his collected works. During his life he kept a master list of titles of the Suspiria he planned on writing, and completed several more before his death; those that survived time and fire were published posthumously in 1891.