Candor
De Quincey wrote from direct personal familiarity, having known all three men during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. When he wrote about them twenty years later, De Quincey ignored the constraints and repressions typical of biography in his era, to produce realistic and nuanced portraits. He "certainly made many of his subjects live in the mind of the reader as few others of their biographers have been able to do. The racy, gossipy tone that often prevails makes these works eminently readable; indeed, Tait's Magazine never sold better than when De Quincey's literary reminiscences were appearing in it."
De Quincey was the first person to address the problem of plagiarism in Coleridge's works, a problem that would be ignored or neglected for a century and a half, until modern scholars addressed it in detail.
Read more about this topic: Recollections Of The Lake Poets
Famous quotes containing the word candor:
“Yet if strict criticism should till frown on our method, let candor and good humor forgive what is done to the best of our judgment, for the sake of perspicuity in the story and the delight and entertainment of our candid reader.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.”
—Russell Lynes (b. 1910)