Lists in Thomas De Quincey’s Life Narratives: Evidence and Arbitrary Selection

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Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 De Quincey, Works, 2: 61.

2 I have made a similar argument elsewhere regarding De Quincey’s relationship to his material possessions—how he wishes to master them while he is also fascinated by their ability to generate unexpected narratives and life trajectories. See Hatton, Agency of Objects, 137–183.

3 Morrison, The English Opium Eater, 31.

4 I use “life narrative” as a broad category of “self-referential” writing as defined by Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 3. Since De Quincey’s text was originally published anonymously, there is controversy over whether it actually functions as an autobiography, given that he violates Lejeune’s “autobiographical pact.” See, for example, Levin, Romantic Art of Confession, 7.

5 However, for readers, this is not always the case, as De Quincey notes in his letter to the magazine a few months after his text was published, with some readers seeing an “overbalance on the side of the pleasures of opium.” De Quincey, Works, 2: 79.

6 McDonagh, De Quincey’s Disciplines, 1.

7 Goody, Domestication, 80.

8 Young, “Un-Black Boxing the List,” 502.

9 Von Contzen, “Die Affordanzen der Liste,” 319–321; Levine, Forms, 6. See also Rüggemeier, “Lists in Life Writing,” 331.

10 Belknap, “The Literary List,” 37; Little, “The Politics of Lists,” 125–126.

11 Young, “Un-Black Boxing the List,” 504.

12 De Quincey, Works, 1: 34.

13 Levin, Romantic Art of Confession, 10.

14 Lejeune, On Diary, 51.

15 Rüggemeier, “Lists in Life Writing,” 331.

16 Campbell, “Understanding,” 45.

17 Morton, The Poetics of Spice, 108. I discuss this process in more detail in Hatton, Agency of Objects, 164.

18 See, for example, Werbin, The List Serves.

19 Von Contzen, “Die Affordanzen der Liste,” 318. See also Belknap, “The Literary List,” 52.

20 Von Contzen, “Experience,” 315.

21 De Quincey, Works, 2: 81.

22 De Quincey, Works, 2: 82.

23 De Quincey, Works, 2: 82.

24 De Quincey, Works, 2: 85.

25 Lejeune, On Diary, 51.

26 Morrison, “De Quincey’s Addiction,” 271.

27 Latour speaks of a second Enlightenment of the social sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century. See Latour, Never Been Modern, 35.

28 Rüggemeier, “Lists in Life Writing,” 334.

29 De Quincey, Works, 2: 10. As opium was legal, widely available, and broadly used for a range of complaints, De Quincey’s “habit” would have been seen more in moral than criminal terms. See Morrison, “De Quincey’s Addiction,” 271–272.

30 De Quincey, Works, 3: 132–142.

31 De Quincey, Works, 10: 366–377.