Inspector of the Dead (35 page)

I
’m indebted to
De Quincey biographers Grevel Lindop (
The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey
) and Robert Morrison (
The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey
). The quality of their scholarship is matched by their generosity in answering my questions and guiding me through De Quincey’s world.

In Grevel Lindop’s case, he literally became a guide, escorting me through De Quincey locations in Manchester, England (where De Quincey was born), and Grasmere in the Lake District (where De Quincey lived in Dove Cottage after Wordsworth moved out). Meanwhile Robert Morrison sent me numerous pieces by and about De Quincey that I hadn’t been able to locate and that were invaluable to my research. Sometimes we exchanged e-mails several times a day.

Historian Judith Flanders graciously answered my questions and offered advice. Her books about Victorian culture—especially
The Victorian House
,
The Victorian City
, and
The Invention of Murder (How the Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime)
—are central to my understanding of London in the 1850s. In addition to being a consummate scholar, Judith is also a novelist (
Writer’s Block
) and has a rare sense of humor.

For more information about Queen Victoria’s attackers, read Paul Thomas Murphy’s
Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy.

The go-to volume for information about the Crimean War is Orlando Figes’s
The Crimean War: A History
.

About Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, read Gillian Gill’s
We Two: Victoria and Albert, Rulers, Partners, Rivals.

The following books were very helpful also: Peter Ackroyd’s
London: A Biography,
Richard D. Altick’s
Victorian People and Ideas,
Anne-Marie Beller’s
Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction,
Alfred Rosling Bennett’s
London and Londoners in the 1850s and 1860s
(a memoir), Ian Bondeson’s
Queen Victoria’s Stalker: The Strange Case of the Boy Jones,
Mark Bostridge’s
Florence Nightingale,
David Brown’s
Palmerston: A Biography,
Jennifer Carnell’s
The Literary Lives of Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
Belton Cobb’s
The First Detectives and the Early Career of Richard Mayne, Police Commissioner,
Tim Pat Coogan’s
The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy,
Heather Creaton’s
Victorian Diaries: The Daily Lives of Victorian Men and Women,
Judith Flanders’s
Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain,
Alison Gernsheim’s
Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey,
Ruth Goodman’s
How to Be a Victorian,
Winifred Hughes’s
The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of the 1860s,
Steven Johnson’s
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic,
Petrus de Jon’s
De Quincey’s Loved Ones,
Henry Mayhew’s
London Labour and the London Poor
(a contemporary account published in 1861–62), Sally Mitchell’s
Daily Life in Victorian England,
Chris Payne’s
The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime through the Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective
,
Liza Picard’s
Victorian London,
Catherine Peters’s
The King of Inventors: A Life of Wilkie Collins,
Daniel Pool’s
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles
Dickens Knew,
Charles Manby Smith’s
Curiosities of London
(an 1853 account), Lytton Strachey’s
Eminent Victorians
and his
Queen Victoria,
Judith Summers’s
Soho: A History of London’s Most Colourful Neighborhood,
Kate Summerscale’s
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
and her
Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady,
F. M. L. Thompson’s
The Rise of Respectable Society (A Social History of Victorian Britain 1830–1900),
J. J. Tobias’s
Crime and Police in England 1700–1900,
and Yvonne M. Ward’s
Censoring Queen Victoria: How Two Gentlemen Edited a Queen and Created an Icon.

The complete
Works of Thomas De Quincey
are available in twenty-one volumes, for which Grevel Lindop acted as general editor. Robert Morrison edited two compact collections,
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
and
Thomas De Quincey: On Murder.
David Wright’s edition of
Thomas De Quincey: Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets
features De Quincey’s candid reminiscences about Coleridge and Wordsworth.

I’m grateful for the friendship and guidance of Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich along with the other good folks at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, especially Lauren E. Abramo, Mike Hoogland, Sharon Pelletier, and Rachel Stout.

I’m also indebted to the splendid team at Mulholland Books/Little, Brown/Hachette, particularly (in alphabetical order) Reagan Arthur, Pamela Brown, Judith Clain, Josh Kendall, Wes Miller, Miriam Parker, Amelia Possanza, Michael Pietsch, and Ruth Tross (in the UK).

My wife, Donna, gave her usual excellent advice. It takes a special personality to be married to a writer. I thank her for her decades of patience and understanding when each day for many hours I become a hermit.

David Morrell is an Edgar and Anthony finalist, a Nero and Macavity winner, and a recipient of the prestigious career achievement ThrillerMaster award from the International Thriller Writers. His debut novel,
First Blood
, introduced the character Rambo to the world. He has written twenty-nine works of fiction that have been translated into thirty languages. He is a former literature professor at the University of Iowa and received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University.

davidmorrell.net
	@_DavidMorrell
	DavidMorrellAuthor

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