Of The Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts

On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts is an essay by Thomas De Quincey. A fictional account of a report made to a gentleman's club regarding the visual appreciation of murder. For friends of satire!

An artist of death is stalking Victorian London, recreating earlier masterpieces of murder. Police suspicion falls on the notorious 'opium-eater' Thomas De Quincey, recently returned to the capital, who wrote in detail about the original crimes. Someone is using his essays as inspiration - and he must uncover the truth before the killer completes his work. In MURDER AS A FINE ART, London becomes a battleground between a literary star and a brilliant murderer - whose lives are linked by secrets long buried, but never forgotten.

Former Police Chief Katherine Sullivan has been called brilliant, brave, compassionate, and quirky, but after decades of crime fighting, this resilient grandmother with an artist's soul is discovering that retirement can be just as deadly as being on the job. When Katherine returned to her hometown, her only thought was to comfort her recently divorced daughter. That was before a young woman was found murdered on the estate of the town's richest family. Now, in order to track down the killer, Katherine must uncover the generations of secrets that at least one person as already killed to protect in this charming and smart series debut, The Fine Art of Murder.

De Quincey starts from the real crimes committed by John Williams to construct a single text, on the principles of murder, not in order to regulate the practice but to clarify the trial. It indicates such useful advice as, for example, that "the subject chosen to be assassinated should be in good health. Assassinate, yes, but with art. And with one of the best samples of literature in the English language.

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.

This is the story of a national obsession. Ever since the Ratcliffe Highway Murders caused a nation-wide panic in Regency England, the British have taken an almost ghoulish pleasure in 'a good murder'. This fascination helped create a whole new world of entertainment, inspiring novels, plays and films, puppet shows, paintings and true-crime journalism - as well as an army of fictional detectives who still enthrall us today. A Very British Murder is Lucy Worsley's captivating account of this curious national obsession. It is a tale of dark deeds and guilty pleasures, a riveting investigation into the British soul by one of our finest historians.

A wildly entertaining and surprisingly educational dive into art history as you've never seen it before, from the host of the beloved ArtCurious podcast We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know that Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed--or even murdered. Or how about the fact that one of Andy Warhol's most enduring legacies involves Caroline Kennedy's moldy birthday cake and a collection of toenail clippings? ArtCurious is a colorful look at the world of art history, revealing some of the strangest, funniest, and most fascinating stories behind the world's great artists and masterpieces. Through these and other incredible, weird, and wonderful tales, ArtCurious presents an engaging look at why art history is, and continues to be, a riveting and relevant world to explore.

"Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone." -Thomas de Quincey Miscellaneous Essays (1851) is a collection of essays by Thomas De Quincey, who has been called "...one of the greatest prose stylists of the English Romantic era." It has also been said of the author that he "was a pioneer in sensationalism," and it is that quality which characterizes this volume by expanding his writings on murder and death. The 8 titles it includes are, "On the Knocking at the Gate," "In Macbeth," "Joan of Arc," "The English Mail-Coach," "The Vision of Sudden Death," "Dinner, Real and Reputed," "Orthographic Mutineers," "Murder, Considered As One of the Fine Arts," and "Second Paper on Murder," of which the last two essays are also available as individual releases from Cosimo Classics.