De Quincey Reviewed

Julian North's De Quincey Reviewed is the first book to chart the history of De Quincey's critical reception, from the 1820s to the present. It discusses the fluctuations of his reputation in the course of his successive critical reincarnations as madman, aesthete, fin-de-siecle degenerate, modernist, and imperialist. New insight is given into his significance as a focus for key critical controversies and movements: the Victorian critique of autobiography and style; the debate over literature and addiction; and twentieth-century phenomenological criticism.