In the first part of this famous work published in 1821 but then revised & expanded in 1856 De Quincey vividly describes a number of experiences during his boyhood which he implies laid the foundations for his later life of helpless drug addiction. The second part consists of his remarkable account of the pleasures & pains of opium ostensibly offered as a muted apology for the course his life had taken but often reading like a celebration of it. The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is thus both a classic of English autobiographical writing
- the prose equivalent in its own time of Wordsworths The Prelude or Growth of a Poets Mind
- & at the same time a crucial text in the long history of the Western Worlds ambivalent relationship with hard drugs. Full of psychological insight & colourful descriptive writing it surprised & fascinated De Quinceys contemporaries & has continued to exert its powerful & eccentric appeal ever since.