Born Manchester. Author, best known for "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" (1821). Was as addicted to books as much as to drink or opium, sometimes renting an extra lodging (which he could not afford) because the first was full of books and papers. Reacted badly to his sister's death when he was a child, dwelling on the details of her corpse and post-mortem for longer than is healthy, Developed a profitable line writing sensational reports of murders, rapes, etc. for the mass magazine audience. Wrote "On murder considered as one of the fine arts" and stories of criminal detection which put him among the early detective fiction writers. Married and had 8 children but then moaned about how the noisy, hungry children kept inspiration at bay. His solution was to leave them in poverty for most of the time while he lived with friends, doing little work. Died at home in Edinburgh.
This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Thomas de Quincey
Commemorated ati
Thomas de Quincey
Note: "Quincey" seems to be the accepted spelling rather than the "Quincy" o...
Other Subjects
George Holyoake
Radical journalist, secularist and promoter of the Co-operative Movement. Born Birmingham as George Jacob Holyoake. He coined the term "secularism" in 1851 and "jingoism" in 1878. He edited a secul...
Hogarth Press
Publishing house founded by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It grew from a hobby to become a business, publishing the works of the members of the Bloomsbury Group and books on psychoanalysis and foreig...
Michael Winner
Film director, producer and restaurant critic. Born 40 Belsize Grove. Directed 42 movies, including Death Wish in 1974, many of which were either panned or criticised for their violence and misogyn...
Person, Cinema, Food & Drink, History, Journalism / Publishing
Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Explorer and journalist, born as John Rowlands at Denbigh, Wales. Illegitimate and brought up in a workhouse, he sailed to America as a cabin boy in 1859. He befriended a trader called Henry Hope S...
Person, Exploring, Journalism / Publishing, Race Issues, Seriously Famous, Africa, USA, Wales
Angus McGill
Initiated the Evening Standard's appeal to replace London's lost trees. For 42 years McGill was a columnist with the Evening Standard and was co-creator, with the illustrator Dominic Poelsma, of th...
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