This is the first time these essays have been collected and identified as De Quincey's. Each essay or article is reprinted with full annotation and the author’s reasons for attributing it to De Quincey. The essays vary in length and in subject matter: some are addressed to "The Editor"; some are critical reviews of contemporary magazines; some are week-to-week political commentaries on issues facing the second Tory party. Together they show De Quincey, the journalist, working on a variety of subjects that occur in his writing before and after this time, from the financing of empires to an attack on Macaulay or an analysis of Burke’s mind and style.

Originally published in 1966.

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