Editor’s Preface

The Suspiria have a complex publication history. De Quincey originally published them in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1845, intending them to be a kind of sequel to his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. In their first incarnation, “Dreaming” was presented as an “Introductory Notice,” and “Vision of Life” and “Memorial Suspiria” were joined as a single “Part 2.”

De Quincey later edited and released an updated version of the Suspiria in his Collected Works, with the exception of “The Affliction of Childhood,” which he merged into his larger Autobiographic Sketches. The Collected Works versions are the versions presented here, along with the initial, independent version of “The Affliction of Childhood.” Several Suspiria appeared as posthumous publications, and they’re included here as well.

De Quincey ultimately planned for the Suspiria to be published together in a single volume. Unfortunately he didn’t live to see his plan completed, and today only those Suspiria remain that escaped time, fire, and addiction. They’re presented in this edition not in the order in which they were originally published, but in the order suggested by Alexander H. Japp in his The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Volume I.

Of the Suspiria published during De Quincey’s life, to date only the Blackwood’s editions have been available as digital transcriptions. The edition you’re reading now is, to the editor’s knowledge, the first digital transcription of the later Collected Works versions.

“Dreaming,” “The Palimpsest of the Human Brain,” “Vision of Life,” “Memorial Suspiria,” “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,” and “Savannah-La-Mer” were transcribed from De Quincey’s Collected Writings Volume XIII, edited by David Masson. A paragraph at the end of “The Affliction of Childhood,” which is duplicated in “Dreaming,” has been removed.

“Daughter of Lebanon” was transcribed from Volume III of the same set.

“The Apparition of the Brocken” was transcribed from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and Kindred Papers.