Papers relating to Lindop's work on De Quincey

This extensive body of material documents the project which resulted in the huge scholarly edition, The works of Thomas De Quincey (Pickering and Chatto, 2000-2003); Lindop held the role of General Editor, co-ordinating an international team of eleven other editors. Some of the correspondence and papers represent the pre-history of the project, including Lindop's growing interest in editing the works of De Quincey after publishing his biography The opium-eater (Dent, 1981) and editing Confessions of an English opium-eater and other writings for Oxford World's Classics in 1985. There are some files relating to the initial proposal and early project plans, as well as funding applications and the engagement of other editors. There is a large quantity of editorial records - correspondence, papers, audio cassettes, microfilms and digital material - which document the processes of tracking down manuscript and printed sources, recording variants, establishing the final text, and seeing this through the publication process. Correspondence files span the whole history of the project and contain Lindop's correspondence with fellow editors, Pickering and Chatto, other publishers, literary associations, academics, students, librarians, archivists, and other interested individuals. There is also a small series of supplementary material which relates to Lindop's De Quincey scholarship but is not directly linked to the preparation of the Pickering and Chatto edition.

The arrangement of the material reflects Lindop's own organisation of his papers where possible. Lindop deposited most of the editing project papers with the Library before the main body of his archive was acquired. A box list of this material was produced, and the Former Reference field in each catalogue description below records the box and file number as given in this earlier handlist.