On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (Penguin Little Black Classics)

by Thomas De Quincey

Paperback

Status

Available

Call number

PR4532 .M64

Genres

Fiction

Publication

PENGUIN GROUP

Description

Essays. Philosophy. Nonfiction. Humor (Nonfiction.) HTML: Take a look at the entertainment landscape today�??the most popular books, movies, and television shows all revolve around murder and its dissection by brilliant investigators. Renowned British essayist Thomas de Quincey stumbled on this truth early in the nineteenth century, prompting him to pen the satirical piece On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. In it, de Quincey gets to the very heart of our ongoing obsession with the finer points of killing.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Judith.Flanders

“Pleasant it is, no doubt, to drink tea with your sweetheart, but most disagreeable to find her bubbling in the tea-urn.” So wrote the essayist Thomas de Quincey in 1827, and, really, it is hard to argue with him. Even more pleasant, he went on, was to read about someone else’s sweetheart

bubbling in the tea-urn. The world adores murder in the abstract. Without it, we’d have no Hamlet. No Tony Soprano. De Quincey created the model for the gentleman-murderer. It was de Quincey, as well, who understood that violent crime plus art equaled a puzzle, a problem, a solution—a how, a who and a why: the core of all crime fiction. To this formula he added charm and humor. As the narrator of “On Murder” warns: “If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.”

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LibraryThing member Xleptodactylous

Thomas de Quincey became enthralled and haunted by the murderer John Williams in 1811 and, although his works have always had the macabre about them, this essay looks at murder in particular in a more literary and scholarly way: imbuing it with the same aesthetic pleasures one might gain from other

forms of art, such as writing or paintings. It is part-fictional but wholly satirical, commenting on the public horror-cum-delight in murders and the proliferate want of Philosophers to get themselves assassinated.

A wonderful book that really portrays the mind-set of those writing in the 19th Century. One is reminded of rich, languid personalities of the time; those who had money to spare on betting on which trickle of condensation may reach the window pane first, and those who viewed murder as nothing but a fanciful notion that may warrant a conversation. It is written in the manner and style as one would expect of a pre-Victorian writer; similar in tone yet without the consumerist pallour of a late-19th Century tale.

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LibraryThing member TheCrow2

Satirical essay on murder as a form of art. Although the idea is great the archaic language makes it relatively hard to enjoy it. My main issue is that I haven't found it funny at all, and it's not a good thing for a supposedly satirical writing.

LibraryThing member pivic

Fair, but not my cup of tea at all. It was interesting to see a bit of philosophy thrown into the mix where murder is concerned, although this monograph was roughly a century before the start of criminology, not to mention forensic psychology. Not my style at all, but still an interesting dip into

murder as posed nearly two-hundred years ago.

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LibraryThing member ritaer

satiric essay on the human fascination with murder

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