ABSTRACT

Thomas De Quincey repeatedly showed that he was intrigued by cryptographic communications, and the most important coded writing in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) concerns the identities of prominent men in contemporary English society who consumed opium habitually. “Applications” was the standard term for identifying the people to whom a text referred, and the key trait of De Quincey’s references to actual people is that they appear designed to be applied by some readers whose knowledge of books and periodicals has prepared them for the task (although, unfortunately, De Quincey’s list of opium-eaters was modified by the London Magazine in such a way that the author’s intentions were subverted). The audience to whom De Quincey addresses these messages is not insiders (such as those who might know the prominent opium-eaters personally), but rather the “reading public.”

摘要

托马斯·德·昆西（Thomas De Quincey）反复表明，他对加密通信很感兴趣，他的《英国鸦片吃者自白》（1821年）中最重要的编码文字涉及当代英国社会中习惯食用鸦片的着名人物的身份。“应用程序”是用于识别文本所引用的人员的标准术语，而De Quincey对实际人员的引用的主要特征是，它们似乎是为某些读者所采用的，这些读者对书籍和期刊的知识已经为他们做好了准备。任务（尽管遗憾的是，《伦敦杂志》修改了德昆西的食鸦片名单以某种方式破坏了作者的意图）。De Quincey向其传达这些信息的听众不是内部人员（例如那些可能认识主要的鸦片食用者的人），而是“阅读大众”。