Author

Thomas De Quincey(1785–1859)

Thomas De Quincey is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, and manuscripts (1830–1846). 5 distinct works are named, most often in Thomas Hood., and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.

Engagement: AnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in: Letters · Books · Essays · Manuscripts
Documented: 1830–1846

Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

In Fuller’s words

“De Quincey says Guido's heads are considered of more perfect beauty than those of Raphael and I can see that it may be so but the light of the central Soul does not so shine through them, they do not come upon us like stars.”

On Michelangelo and Raphael

When Fuller engaged with Thomas De Quincey

I. Childhood

II. Adolescence1record

III. Self-Directed

IV. Transcendentalist

V. New York6records

VI. Europe2records

✦. Memoirs (1852)

1810

1820

1832

1836

1844

1846

1850

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Quincey in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

1830—

Letter to George T. Davis

p162

“[In Neal's obituary of Miller, as quoted by Hudspeth fn. 4:] "the living truth of what De Quincey had portrayed or tried to portray with the pencil of untruth in the celebrated Opium-Eater”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Inferred In Neal's obituary of Miller, Neal compares Miller's lost London journal to De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, calling it "the living truth of what De Quincey had portrayed or tried to portray with the pencil of untruth in the celebrated Opium-Eater." Fuller engages with this comparison as part of reading Neal's piece, encountering De Quincey through Neal's invocation rather than direct reading.

1845—

New-York Daily Tribune

“Shelley's Poems” · December 27, 1845 · p. 1

analyzed · read

“O, could but a De Quincey describe those days in which the bridge between the real and ideal rose unbroken!”

Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860.

1845—

The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . .

“The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . .”

mentioned2 selected passages

“O could but a De Quinceyn describe those days in which the bridge between the real and ideal rose unbroken!”

“He would not do it, though, as Suspiria de Profundis, but as sighs of joy upon the mountain hight.”

Fuller, Margaret. "The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley . . ." New-York Daily Tribune, 27 December 1845.

1845—

Thomas Hood.

“Thomas Hood.”

mentioned3 selected passages

“Had n’t you an Opium-Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant, and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man?”

“the waning influence of that potent Drug whose stupendous pleasures and enormous pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater.”

“Marry, I have one of his Confessions with his own name and mark to it: an apology for a certain stain on his M. S.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Thomas Hood." New-York Daily Tribune, 9 August 1845.

1846—

Letter to Richard F. Fuller

p216

read

“I send a novel, Klosterheim, wh Mother can keep.”

Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. IV. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.

1846—

Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . IV.

“Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . IV.”

mentioned

“A person of an opposite character and celebrity indeed, is De Quincey, the English Opium-Eater, and who lately has delighted us again with the papers in Blackwood, headed SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS.”

Fuller, Margaret. "Things and Thoughts in Europe . . . IV." New-York Daily Tribune, 5 November 1846. · 5 November 1846

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

On Michelangelo and Raphael

p16

readManuscript page

“De Quincey says Guido's heads are considered of more perfect beauty than those of Raphael and I can see that it may be so but the light of the central Soul does not so shine through them, they do not come upon us like stars.”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Michelangelo and Raphael." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Fuller writes 'De Quincey says Guido's heads are considered of more perfect beauty than those of Raphael.' No specific De Quincey essay is named; the remark is attributed to him but not sourced to a particular work. Title is unidentified. Fuller explicitly names De Quincey and attributes to him the judgment that Guido Reni's heads 'are considered of more perfect beauty than those of Raphael.' She then qualifies and partly disagrees: 'the light of the central Soul does not so shine through them.'

n.d.—

Wordsworth's Greece and Notes on Greek Myth

p15

mentionedManuscript page

“De Quincey's / Jupiter Olympus”

Fuller, Margaret. "Wordsworth's Greece and Notes on Greek Myth." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Inferred The later pencil addition on p15 reads 'De Quincey's / Jupiter Olympus / +'. This is almost certainly De Quincey's essay 'The Theban Sphinx' or more likely an essay specifically on the Zeus/Jupiter at Olympia. Fuller's notes on the Jupiter statue of Phidias throughout pp11–14 suggest she was using Wordsworth's Greece as a primary source and noting De Quincey as a related text.