The information contained in this book or books is provided for informational purposes only and includes the book title, author name, and a brief description or abstract. For the full text of the book, please contact the author or publisher.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings
'I took it: -
and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from
its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world
within me!'
Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) launched a fascination with drug use and abuse that has continued from his day to ours. In the Confessions
De Quincey invents recreational drug taking, but he also details both
the lurid nightmares that beset him in the depths of his addiction as
well as his humiliatingly futile attempts to renounce the drug. Suspiria de Profundis
centres on the deep afflictions of De Quincey's childhood, and examines
the powerful and often paradoxical relationship between drugs and human
creativity. In The English Mail-Coach, the tragedies of De
Quincey's past are played out with horrifying repetitiveness against a
backdrop of Britain as a Protestant and an imperial power.
This
edition presents De Quincey's finest essays in impassioned
autobiography, together with three appendices that are highlighted by a
wealth of manuscript material related to the three main texts.
