De Quincey, Thomas

De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859), English writer, born in Manchester. At the age of 17 he ran away from school to Wales and from there to London. Later, however, he was reconciled with his family and studied at the University of Oxford. In 1809 he settled in Grasmere, where he joined the literary circle of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey and edited the Westmorland Gazette. In 1817 he married a local girl, Margaret Simpson, who had already given birth to his son. Returning to London in 1820, he wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), a vivid description of his own experiences as an opium addict, which was to make him famous. He lived for 12 years (1828-1840) in Edinburgh. In addition to many contributions in Blackwood's, Tait's Magazine, and Hogg's Instructor, his work includes “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth”, a brilliant piece of Shakespearean criticism, Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (1827), Suspiria de Profundis (1845), Joan of Arc (1847), The English Mailcoach (1849), and Autobiographic Sketches (1853).