On Murder: Considered as One of the Fine Arts by Thomas de Quincey

Description

In “On Murder: Considered as one of the Fine Arts”, Thomas De Quincy used a series of murders, allegedly committed in London in 1811 by John Williams, as the centerpiece of a satirical essay that whimsically discusses the aesthetics of murder. In this commentary, De Quincy uses black humor to make a tongue-in-cheek statement about the impact of crime.

The essay was enthusiastically received and led to numerous sequels, including “A Second Paper On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts” in 1839 and a “Postscript” in 1854. These essays have exerted a strong influence on subsequent literary representations of crime and were lauded by such critics as G. K. Chesterton, Wyndham Lewis and George Orwell.