[To Make Oatmeal Porridge]

The manuscript is in the Folger Shakespeare Library as MS Y.d.543 (2), a single sheet of white paper written on both sides in black ink. The verso has a note at the top in the hand of Matthew Davenport Hill, bibliophile and friend of De Quincey, which reads, ‘This was written by the English Opium Eater De Quincey & given to me by him when I was at Edinburgh in the autumn of 1835. MH’.