About This Blog
Image: British History Online This blog is about two things: the ways that history stays with us in the present, and the ways that history is represented and discussed in popular culture. It is is inspired by two figures from literature that remind us that the past is always with us. Who is Anne*? Anne of Oxford Street appears in Thomas De Quincey’s 1821 memoir, Confessions of an English Opium Eater . According to De Quincey, she was a real woman—so young, that today she would be called a teenager —he befriends after leaving boarding school for London. Having never known her last name, in its place he gives us the street where they spent time as impoverished youths. Anne is a woman of the streets, a kind-hearted prostitute who cares for the author. He vows to return to her and repay her kindness, but on returning to London, is unable to find her. With only her common Christian name, he wanders hopelessly through the streets of London in search of her. He imagines her coming to so...