Chapter 3 - Casting About

Summary

“Casting About: Thomas De Quincey in the World” begins with one of the author’s portraits of Wordsworth from his ‘The Society of the Lakes’ series for Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine. Like much of his writing, the essay is dominated by digressions, in particular his recollections of the many coach journeys he undertook with his wife Margaret along the road between Ambleside and Grasmere. Collectively, these reminiscences constitute a form of mourning for Peggy who had died the previous summer. The chapter then turns to De Quincey’s hectic, occasionally desperate, life as a debtor in 1830s Edinburgh. He wrote to support himself and his family, often from the confines of the debtor’s sanctuary in Holyrood Park. His variety and scale of output demonstrate genius and financial desperation in equal measure. The chapter concludes with readings of his canonical works Suspiria de Profundis and The English Mail-Coach. Written in a newly secure environment of managed debt, he produced complex accounts of temporality and consciousness.