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Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey

ISBN: 9780140439014 PUBLISHER: Penguin Books Ltd FORMAT: Paperback PAGES: 352 PUBLICATION DATE: 27.03.2003 DIMENSIONS: 198mmX129mmX20mm 258grams

DESCRIPTION: A masterpiece of autobiography, and perhaps the first literary memoir of an addict, the "Penguin Classics" edition of Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" is edited with an introduction by Barry Milligan. "Confessions" is a remarkable account of the pleasures and pains of worshipping at the 'Church of Opium'. Thomas De Quincey consumed daily large quantities of laudanum (at the time a legal painkiller), and this autobiography of addiction hauntingly describes his surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings through London, along with the nightmares, despair and paranoia to which he became prey. The result is a work in which the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory and imagination are seamlessly interwoven, describing in intimate detail the mind-altering pleasures and pains unique to opium. "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" forged a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, paving the way for later generations of literary addicts from Baudelaire to James Frey, and anticipating psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious. This edition is based on the original serial version of 1821, and reproduces two 'sequels', "Suspiria de Profundis" (1845) and "The English Mail-Coach" (1849). It also includes a critical introduction discussing the romantic figure of the addict and the tradition of confessional literature, and an appendix on opium in t

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