Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Textual Note and Abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 ‘A Man Darkly Wonderful’: Coleridgean Reorientations in De Quincey Criticism
- 2 ‘Like the Ghost in Hamlet’: Radical Politics and Revisionary Interpretation
- 3 Revolutionary Joy: De Quincey's Discovery of Lyrical Ballads
- 4 The Pains of Growth: Language and Cultural Politics
- 5 Power and Knowledge: English Nationalism and the Mediation of Kant in England
- 6 De Quincey as Critic: Politics of Style and Representation of Wordsworth
- Conclusion—Visions and Revisions: New Directions in De Quincey Studies
- A Three Uncollected Coleridgean Marginalia from De Quincey
- B ‘Lessons of the French Revolution’
- C ‘To William Tait, Esquire’
- Works Cited
- Index
A - Three Uncollected Coleridgean Marginalia from De Quincey
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Textual Note and Abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 ‘A Man Darkly Wonderful’: Coleridgean Reorientations in De Quincey Criticism
- 2 ‘Like the Ghost in Hamlet’: Radical Politics and Revisionary Interpretation
- 3 Revolutionary Joy: De Quincey's Discovery of Lyrical Ballads
- 4 The Pains of Growth: Language and Cultural Politics
- 5 Power and Knowledge: English Nationalism and the Mediation of Kant in England
- 6 De Quincey as Critic: Politics of Style and Representation of Wordsworth
- Conclusion—Visions and Revisions: New Directions in De Quincey Studies
- A Three Uncollected Coleridgean Marginalia from De Quincey
- B ‘Lessons of the French Revolution’
- C ‘To William Tait, Esquire’
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Coleridge often spoiled a book; but, in the course of doing this, he enriched that book with so many and so valuable notes, tossing about him, with such lavish profusion, from such a cornucopia of discursive reading, and such a fusing intellect, commentaries so many-angled and so manycoloured, that I have envied many a man whose luck has placed him in the way of such injuries […]
(W, pp. 217–18)Despite his eloquent testimony to the brilliance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's marginalia, Thomas De Quincey's valuable contemporary knowledge in this regard has been surprisingly neglected. George Whalley's introduction to the collected Marginalia names James Gillman and Charles Lamb as providing ‘the only allegedly independent accounts of Coleridge's practice of writing notes’ (CM, I, p. cxvi). Yet in 1831 (three years before Coleridge's death) De Quincey estimated Coleridge's literary output favourably in comparison with Samuel Parr's, hinting prophetically at some of the crucial later editions of Coleridge's work, including the collected Marginalia which is now appearing:
Coleridge, for example, struggling with the ravages of opium for the last 30 years, and with the res angusta domi, in a degree never known to Parr, has contrived to print a dozen 8vo volumes. And were all his contributions to the Morning Post and Courier collected, and his letters, many and long, together with his innumerable notes on the fly-leaves and margins of books, he would appear to have been a most voluminous author, instead of meriting the reproach which too often we have been fated to hear, of shameful indolence and waste of stupendous powers.
(M, V, p. 116)In 1839, after H. N. Coleridge's first two volumes of Coleridge's Literary Remains had appeared in 1836 with several of Coleridge's marginalia, De Quincey provided what must be the earliest justification and appeal for a complete collective edition of the marginalia, implicitly criticising in a footnote Coleridge's executors who had failed to initiate a subscription for the purpose:
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- Revisionary GleamDe Quincey, Coleridge and the High Romantic Argument, pp. 269 - 282Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2000