On Murder Read Online

1813

 Becomes addicted to opium. Strained relations with the Wordsworths. Courts Margaret Simpson, the daughter of a Lake District farmer.

1814

 Visits Edinburgh with Wilson, where he meets leading members of the Scottish literary scene, including J. G. Lockhart, the future biographer of Walter Scott, and James Hogg, the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’.

1816

 Birth of son, William Penson, by Margaret Simpson. Estranged from the Wordsworths.

1817

 Marries Margaret Simpson. William Blackwood founds and edits Blackwood’s Magazine, with Wilson, Lockhart, and Hogg as major contributors.

1818

 With Wordsworth, publishes the Tory jeremiad Close Comments upon a Straggling Speech, a denunciation of Henry Brougham, Independent Whig candidate in the parliamentary election campaign in Westmorland. Appointed editor of the local Tory newspaper, the Westmorland Gazette. Slides deeper into debt and addiction. Lucid opium nightmares.

1819

 Dismissed from editorship of the Westmorland Gazette. With Wilson and Lockhart, writes review of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam for Blackwood’s Magazine.

1821

 ‘The Sport of Fortune’, translated from Friedrich Schiller’s ‘Spiel des Schicksals’, published in Blackwood’s Magazine. Quarrels with William Blackwood. Publishes Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in the London Magazine. Conversations with John Keats’s friend Richard Woodhouse. Meets William Hazlitt.

1822

 First publication of the Confessions in book form. Projects a work entitled Confessions of a Murderer but it does not appear.

1823

 ‘Notes from the Pocket Book of a Late Opium-Eater’, including ‘On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth’, in the London Magazine. Appears as ‘The Opium-Eater’ in the Noctes Ambrosianae, a series of raucous and wide-ranging dialogues published in Blackwood’s Magazine (completed 1835).

1824

 Reviews Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, a translation by Thomas Carlyle, in the London Magazine.

1825

 Translates and abridges the German pseudo-Waverley novel Walladmor. Probably composes manuscript on Peter Anthony Fonk, which he later attempts to incorporate into a sequel to ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’. Leaves the London Magazine.

1826

 Rejoins Blackwood’s Magazine, where he publishes his review of Robert Gillies’s German Stories.

1827

 ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’ in Blackwood’s Magazine. Begins to write for the Edinburgh Saturday Post. Meets Carlyle and an intimacy develops.

1828

 ‘Toilette of the Hebrew Lady’ and ‘Elements of Rhetoric’ in Black-wood’s Magazine. Writes the manuscript fragment ‘To the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine’, which he attempts to incorporate into a sequel to ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’.

1829

 ‘Sketch of Professor Wilson’ in the Edinburgh Literary Gazette.

1830

 ‘Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays’, ‘Richard Bentley’, and a series of heated Tory diatribes, including ‘French Revolution’ and ‘Political Anticipations’, in Blackwood’s Magazine. Moves permanently to Edinburgh.

1831

 ‘Dr Parr and his Contemporaries’ in Blackwood’s Magazine. Prosecuted and briefly imprisoned for debt.

1832

 Klosterheim: or, the Masque, a one-volume gothic romance, published by Blackwood.

1833

 Contributes ‘The Age of the Earth’, translated from Kant’s ‘Die Frage, ob die Erde veralte, physicalisch erwogen’, and an assessment, ‘Mrs Hannah More’, to Tait’s Magazine, the leading Scottish rival of Blackwood’s Magazine. Twice prosecuted for debt. Takes refuge in the debtor’s sanctuary at Holyrood. Death of son Julius, aged 3.

1834

 ‘Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ and ‘Sketches of Life and Manners from the Autobiography of a Late Opium-Eater’ (sporadically until 1841) in Tait’s Magazine. Three times prosecuted for debt. Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and William Blackwood. Blackwood’s sons Robert and Alexander take over the management of the magazine.

1835

 ‘Oxford’ and ‘A Tory’s Account of Toryism, Whiggism, and Radicalism’ in Tait’s Magazine.

1837

 ‘The Revolt of the Tartars’ in Blackwood’s Magazine.