Editing Thomas De Quincey (section)

==Collected works==
During the final decade of his life, De Quincey labored on a collected edition of his works.<ref name=HAE/>{{rp|469–82}} He believed the task was impossible.<ref>De Quincey, Thomas. ''Writings, 1799–1820'', edited by Barry Symonds. Vol. 1 of ''The Works of Thomas De Quincey'', ed. Grevel Lindop. London: [[Pickering & Chatto Publishers|Pickering & Chatto]], 2000.  x.</ref> [[Ticknor and Fields]], a [[Boston]] publishing house, first proposed such a collection and solicited De Quincey's approval and co-operation. It was only when De Quincey, a chronic procrastinator, failed to answer repeated letters from [[James Thomas Fields]]<ref name=HAE/>{{rp|472}} that the American publisher proceeded independently, reprinting the author's works from their original magazine appearances. Twenty-two volumes of ''De Quincey's Writings'' were issued from 1851 to 1859.

The existence of the American edition prompted a corresponding British edition. Since the spring of 1850, De Quincey had been a regular contributor to an Edinburgh periodical called ''Hogg's Weekly Instructor'', whose publisher, [[James Hogg (publisher)|James Hogg]], undertook to publish ''Selections Grave and Gay from Writings Published and Unpublished by Thomas De Quincey''. De Quincey edited and revised his works for the Hogg edition; the 1856 second edition of the ''Confessions'' was prepared for inclusion in ''Selections Grave and Gay…''. The first volume of that edition appeared in May 1853, and the fourteenth and last in January 1860, a month after the author's death. Both of these were multi-volume collections, yet made no pretence to be complete. Scholar and editor David Masson attempted a more definitive collection: ''The Works of Thomas De Quincey'' appeared in fourteen volumes in 1889 and 1890. Yet De Quincey's writings were so voluminous and widely dispersed that further collections followed: two volumes of ''The Uncollected Writings'' (1890), and two volumes of ''Posthumous Works'' (1891–93). De Quincey's 1803 diary was published in 1927.<ref name=HAE/>{{rp|525}} Another volume, ''New Essays by De Quincey'', appeared in 1966.