Excerpt from The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1: Autobiography From 1785 to 1803 IT was in 1852 that De Quincey, who was then Sixty-seven years of age, and had been resident in or near Edinburgh through the preceding five-and-twenty years, began the pre paration of a collective edition Of his writings, to be published by the Edinburgh house of Mr. James Hogg. The scheme of such a collective edition had been anticipated by the American publishing firm of Messrs. Ticknor and Fields of Boston. A volume or two of their American edition had already appeared when De Quincey undertook the British edition. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.