New biography of Thomas De Quincey

De Quincey jacket

This month, we see the launch of a new book on Thomas De Quincey – arguably the most mysterious member of the Wordsworth circle and the last of the Romantics. The book, Guilty Thing, is out on April 7th and  is a gripping study – part reportage, part biography, part literary criticism:
 
Thomas De Quincey - opium-eater, celebrity journalist, and professional doppelgänger – is embedded in our culture. Modelling his character on Coleridge and his sensibility on Wordsworth, he took over the poet’s  former cottage in Grasmere and turned it into an opium den. Here, increasingly detached from the world, he nurtured his growing hatred of his former idols and his obsession with murder as one of the fine arts.
 
De Quincey may never have felt the equal of the giants of the Romantic Literature he so worshipped but the writing style he pioneered – scripted and sculptured emotional memoir – was to inspire generations of writers: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf. James Joyce knew whole pages of his work off by heart and he was arguably the father of what we now call psychogeography.
 
This spectacular biography, the produce of meticulous scholarship and beautifully supple prose, tells the riches-to-rags story of a figure of dazzling complexity and dazzling originality, whose rackety life was lived on the run, and both brings De Quincey and his martyred but wild soul triumphantly to life.
 
30% Discount Available to the Friends of Coleridge
Simply go to http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/guilty-thing-9781408839775/ and quote GUILTYTHING at the checkout.

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