Autobiographic Sketches, sometimes referred to as the Autobiography of Thomas De Quincey, is a work first published in 1853.
Thomas Penson De Quincey was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West.
“Sketches” suggests the mode of composition of this work. De Quincey did not deliberately plan and forthwith compose his autobiography. Rather he began by contributing reminiscent articles to periodicals, a practice which he continued until he had written and published about 30 essays. In 1853, he collected these articles, revised, enlarged and polished them with his customary diligence, and gave them to the public under the title Autobiographic Sketches.
An autobiography is a self-written account of the life of oneself. The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English periodical The Monthly Review, when he suggested the word as a hybrid, but condemned it as "pedantic". However, its next recorded use was in its present sense, by Robert Southey in 1809. Despite only being named early in the nineteenth century, first-person autobiographical writing originates in antiquity. Roy Pascal differentiates autobiography from the periodic self-reflective mode of journal or diary writing by noting that "[autobiography] is a review of a life from a particular moment in time, while the diary, however reflective it may be, moves through a series of moments in time". Autobiography thus takes stock of the autobiographer's life from the moment of composition. While biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints, autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory. The memoir form is closely associated with autobiography but it tends, as Pascal claims, to focus less on the self and more on others during the autobiographer's review of his or her life.
However, Sketches does not contain all of De Quincey's autobiographical work: it must be supplemented by a large amount of his other reminiscent composition, particularly by the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , by The English Mail-Coach , and by that noteworthy series of papers included under the general title, Suspiria de Profundis . In truth, all of these compositions might, with entire propriety, be included under the title Autobiographic Sketches. As a matter of fact, the autobiography of De Quincey, more than that of almost anyone else, is fragmentary — a succession of sketches loosely connected and widely scattered. De Quincey lived from early childhood in a dream world; the record of his successive dreams constitutes his true inner autobiography.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him fame almost overnight..."
The English Mail-Coach is an essay by the English author Thomas De Quincey. A "three-part masterpiece" and "one of his most magnificent works," it first appeared in 1849 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in the October and December issues.
Suspiria de profundis is one of the best-known and most distinctive literary works of the English essayist Thomas De Quincey.
De Quincey might have written an objective account of the outward events of his life, and thus have attained a brevity and a form such as David Hume attained in his autobiographic sketch. De Quincey did not do this, and, in consequence, his spirit is communicated. Apart from their value as a revelation of De Quincey's soul, the Autobiographic Sketches are remarkable from a purely literary point of view. To be sure, they exhibit both the defects and the virtues of De Quincey's style. At one time, the author's “impassioned prose” flows swiftly; at another, almost uninteresting narrative is becalmed in sluggish prose. In general, however, the style is of high quality and the narrative compelling.
David Hume was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Hume's empiricist approach to philosophy places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes as a British Empiricist. Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1738), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Against philosophical rationalists, Hume held that passion rather than reason governs human behaviour. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge is founded solely in experience.
De Quincey's account of his visit “about an hour after high noon” to the chamber where his little sister lay dead is memorable, as is his account of the Sunday mornings when he went with his family to a “church having all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic,” and of his stay at “Oxford, ancient mother, hoary with ancestral honors.” The appeal of the whole series is strong, and most readers that return to these Sketches frequently to commune with the strange elfin spirit of De Quincey, to pass under the spell of the “organ music” of his rhetoric, to feel something of that “mighty and essential solitude” which, in the words of the author, “stretches out a sceptre of fascination.”
The Voyage of the Beagle is the title most commonly given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks, bringing him considerable fame and respect. This was the third volume of The Narrative of the Voyages of H.M. Ships Adventure and Beagle, the other volumes of which were written or edited by the commanders of the ships. Journal and Remarks covers Darwin's part in the second survey expedition of the ship HMS Beagle. Due to the popularity of Darwin's account, the publisher reissued it later in 1839 as Darwin's Journal of Researches, and the revised second edition published in 1845 used this title. A republication of the book in 1905 introduced the title The Voyage of the "Beagle", by which it is now best known.
Autobiographical comics are autobiography in the form of comic books or comic strips. The form first became popular in the underground comics movement and has since become more widespread. It is currently most popular in Canadian, American and French comics; all artists listed below are from the US unless otherwise specified.
Biographia Literaria, or in full Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, is an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which he published in 1817, in two volumes of twenty-three chapters.
The Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from Saint Augustine's Confessions. Covering the first fifty-three years of Rousseau's life, up to 1765, it was completed in 1769, but not published until 1782, four years after Rousseau's death, even though Rousseau did read excerpts of his manuscript publicly at various salons and other meeting places.
The Western Lands is a 1987 novel by William S. Burroughs. The final book of the trilogy that begins with Cities of the Red Night (1981) and continues with The Place of Dead Roads (1983), its title refers to the western bank of the Nile River, which in Egyptian mythology is the Land of the Dead. Inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Burroughs explores the after-death state by means of dream scenarios, hallucinatory passages, talismanic magic, occultism, superstition, and his characteristic view of the nature of reality.
The Nursery Suite is one of the last compositions by Edward Elgar. Like Elgar's The Wand of Youth suites, it makes use of sketches from the composer's childhood.
The evolution of Richard Wagner's operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen was a long and tortuous process, and the precise sequence of events which led the composer to embark upon such a vast undertaking is still unclear. The composition of the text took place between 1848 and 1853, when all four libretti were privately printed; but the closing scene of the final opera, Götterdämmerung, was revised a number of times between 1856 and 1872. The names of the last two Ring operas, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, were probably not definitively settled until 1856.
Spanish Renaissance literature is the literature written in Spain during the Spanish Renaissance.
Ancient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature.
James Robert Hogg (1806–1888) was a Scottish publisher.
The Ghost-Seer or The Apparitionist is an unfinished novel by Friedrich Schiller. It first appeared in several instalments from 1787 to 1789 in the journal Thalia, later appearing as a three-volume book in its own right.
Opium and Romanticism are well-connected subjects, as readers of Romantic poetry often come into contact with literary criticisms about the influence of opium on its works. The idea that opium has had a direct effect on works of romantic poetry is still under debate; however, the literary criticism that has emerged throughout the years suggests very compelling ideas about opium and its impact on Romantic texts. Usually these criticisms tend to focus on poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and George Crabbe.
Salim Barakat is a Kurdish-Syrian novelist and poet. He was brought up in Qamishli in northern Syria and spent most of his youth there. In 1970 he moved to Damascus to study Arabic literature but after one year he moved to Beirut where he stayed until 1982. While in Beirut he published five volumes of poetry, a diary and two volumes of autobiography. He moved to Cyprus and worked as a managing editor of the prestigious Palestinian journal Al-Karmel, whose editor was Mahmoud Darwish. In 1999 he moved to Sweden, where he still resides.
Alan Burns was an English author and one of the key figures in the short-lived group of experimental writers working in Britain in the nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, which included writers such as B.S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin and Giles Gordon. Burns wrote eight novels, a play and the script for two short films, as well as several short pieces, a book of interviews with writers, articles and edited an American report on pornography and censorship for publication in the UK. Burns was one of the earliest teachers of creative writing as an academic discipline in Britain, appointed as the first writer in residence on the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Master’s programme and later he went on to teach this discipline in both Australia and the USA. Burns also worked with Peter Whitehead, writing Jeanette Cochrane, a short experimental film in a montage style, which featured early music from Pink Floyd and an appearance by Nico.
Vladislav Bajac is Serbian writer, poet, journalist and publisher.
Philippe Lejeune is a French professor and essayist, known as a specialist in autobiography.
The public domain consists of all the creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable.
Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic.