He was the fourth child and second son of Thomas Quincey, a textile merchant, and Elizabeth Penson Quincey, whose London family held a somewhat higher social position than her husband's. His father, a man of some culture, owned what seemed to Thomas a "vast" library and had contributed "Account of a Tour in the Midland Counties" to the
Gentleman's Magazine in 1774.
Young Thomas early formed close ties with his sisters rather than with his "horrid, pugilistic brothers"; his rather distant, authoritarian mother; or his frequently absent father. His most important childhood experiences centered around the deaths of three family members within three years. The death of his younger sister Jane when he was four and a half was "less sorrowful than perplexing" because "death was then scarcely intelligible to me." Two years later, however, the death of his nine-year-old sister Elizabeth devastated him. "Blank anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me.... I wish not to recall the circumstances of that time." Yet this remained one of the seminal experiences of his life and was later re-created in one of the most powerful passages of Autobiographic Sketches, the first volume of Selections Grave and Gay from Writings, Published and Unpublished, of Thomas De Quincey, Revised and Arranged by Himself (1853-1860).
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