[Lessons of the French Revolution]

‘Lessons of the French Revolution. An Unpublished Paper. By Thomas De Quincey’ was first published in The Independent (New York) 5 January 1914, pp. 28–9. The editorial introduction claims that ‘the manuscript has been in our office longer than any of us can remember. Dr William Hayes Ward, who has been on the staff for the last forty-five years, says it was kicking around when he came, and nobody could tell us then where it came from.’ After its publication in The Independent, the leaves of the manuscript became separated. They now survive in two archives: a two-page MS in the Knox College Library was the source for the first half of the transcript in The Independent; another two-page MS in the Berg Collection was the source for the second half of the transcript in The Independent. A third manuscript in the Dove Cottage Library, numbered as page ‘5’, is a continuation of the previous four pages, but not a part of the transcript in The Independent. From the Scottish Record Office, two MS fragments on the French Revolution seem to belong to the same deliberations, as does a related transcript, from an untraced MS, which was transcribed by Japp with the title ‘France—Past and Present’ (PW, vol. I, pp. 143–6). Related to the same argument, De Quincey also drafted an essay on factors that impel and retard the progress of nations. This manuscript is also in Dove Cottage and is included with the transcripts in this section.