Describing the surreal hallucinations, insomnia and nightmarish visions he experienced while consuming daily large amounts of laudanum, Thomas De Quincey's legendary account of the pleasures and pains of opium forged a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, and paved the way for later generations of literary drug-takers from Baudelaire to Burroughs.
Describing the surreal hallucinations, insomnia and nightmarish visions he experienced while consuming daily large amounts of laudanum, Thomas De Quincey's legendary account of the pleasures and pains of opium forged a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, and paved the way for later generations of literary drug-takers from Baudelaire to Burroughs.
Thomas De Quincey was born on 15 August 1789 in Manchester, the son
of an affluent cloth merchant. He ran away from the Manchester
Grammar school aged 17 and travelled in poverty in Wales and London
before being reconciled with his family. He then attended Oxford
University, where he first began to take opium. Despite excelling
at his studies, De Quincey left university without completing his
degree and married Margaret Simpson, the daughter of a local
farmer. Having exhausted his inheritance, partly due to his
addiction to opium, De Quincey found work as a journalist and wrote
prolifically on various subjects for numerous publications.
Confessions of a English Opium-Eater was published in the London
Magazine in 1821 and found instant success. He went on to write
several novels and biographies, and his unusual autobiographical
style made his work extremely popular on both sides of the
Atlantic. When De Quincey's wife Margaret died in 1837, his opium
addiction worsened and he moved away from London to Scotland to
relieve his straitened finances. He died in Edinburgh on 8 December
1859.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) studied at Oxford and failed to take
his degree but discovered opium. He later met Coleridge, Southey,
and the Wordsworths and worked as a journalist in Edinburgh.
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