Thomas De Quincey: Manchester Man and Expert in Murder

J.C. Briggs, author of The Charles Dickens Investigations, talks about Manchester born Thomas De Quincey, literary critic, editor, opium addict, and connoisseur of murder.

J.C. Briggs finds the source of De Quincey’s fascination for murder in his Manchester childhood, the deaths of his sisters, and his education by some very eccentric Manchester men, and takes a look at De Quincey’s editorship of The Westmorland Gazette, his essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, and his chilling account of the famous Ratcliffe Highway Murders which shocked the nation in 1811.

Jean Briggs taught English for many years in schools in Cheshire, Hong Kong, and Lancashire. She now lives in a cottage by a river in Cumbria with a view of the Howgill Fells and a lot of sheep, though it is the streets of Victorian London that are mostly in her mind when she is writing about Charles Dickens as a detective.

The first case for Dickens was TheMurder of Patience Brooke, published in 2014. There are eleven novels in the series so far, published by Sapere Books. Number eleven, The Waxwork Man, came out in September 2023. Her latest book,

The Legacy of Foulstone Manor, set in WW1 was published in February 2024 and there will be another WW1 story later in the year.

She was Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association (2018-2022), is still a board member of the CWA, a member of Historical Writers’ Association, the Dickens Fellowship, The Society of Authors, and a trustee of Sedbergh Book Town.