Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas De Quincey

xul. de 2010 · Cosimo, Inc.

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It is one of the first authoritative works on drug usage and addiction, and it was so influential that it inspired some contemporary writers to their own usage. Arthur Conan Doyle used it as the basis for one of his Sherlock Holmes stories. The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is a startling firsthand account by English translator and essayist THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859) of his addiction to opium, which he initially began taking to soothe the pain of his nerve disorders and eventually resorted to for its capacity to enhance his creativity. This series of essays-on everything from the pleasures and pains of opium use to the impact on a user's wallet-first appeared anonymously in the magazine London in 1821, and were such a hit that they were soon collected in this book, first published the next year. They remain a compelling look inside the mind of an addict.

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Thomas de Quincey, born in 1785, was an English novelist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater, an insightful autobiographical account of his addiction to opium. The death of de Quincey's older sister when he was seven years old shaped his life through the grief and sadness that forced him to seek comfort in an inner world of imagination. He ran away to Wales when he was 17. He then attended Oxford University. It was at Oxford that he first encountered opium, and he subsequently abandoned his study of poetry without a degree, hoping to find a true philosophy. de Quincey wrote essays for journals in London and Edinburgh in order to support his large family. His prose writings and essays contain psychological insights relevant to the modern reader of today. In addition to his voluminous works of criticism and essays, he wrote a novel, Klosterheim or The Masque. Thomas de Quincey died in 1859.